Samsung Jet S8000

As you might guess from the name, the Samsung Jet S8000 is intended to be a very fast phone to use. At its heart is an 800 MHz processor, and the Jet also comes with WiFi and HSDPA high-speed downloads. There's a large 3.1" 800 x 480 pixel display, a 5 megapixel camera and GPS too.

Samsung are one of only a small number of mobile phone manufacturers who produce their own processors. In this case, Samsung say that inside the Jet is an 800 MHz Application Processor, which is probably some sort of ARM device. Samsung say that the Jet is the fastest full-touch device on the market, and that would be even faster than the 600 MHz Apple iPhone 3G S.

Before we get carried away with iPhone comparisons, it is important to point out that the Jet isn't a smartphone

. It runs the new TouchWiz 2.0 interface with a bespoke Samsung web browser called "Dolfin" which can have up to five pages open at once and comes with a built-in ad blocker. There's a multimedia player and email client, and the Samsung Jet can also integrate with corporate Microsoft Exchange servers. For most potential users, the feature set on the Jet is probably perfectly adequate, but it lacks the advantage of the iPhone's massive selection of applications.

We touched on multimedia a moment ago - the Samsung Jet S8000 can play back almost all major audio and video formats, including the ubiquitous MP3, AAC and Windows Media formats plus DivX movies. The Jet has a built-in FM radio and a standard 3.5mm audio socket. The Jet can manage to playback and record D1 video (at least 720 x 480 pixels) at 30 frames per second, which is pretty impressive. The Jet S8000 also has a video editor. All of this media can be stored on microSD cards of up to 16GB.

The 5 megapixel camera on the Jet has autofocus and a dual LED flash. Because it's a Samsung, the Jet's camera also has smile detection and panoramic stitching, plus it can use the Jet's GPS system to geo-tag photographs.

Underneath, this is a quad-band GSM phone with 900 / 2100 MHz UMTS, with HSPDA download speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. In fact, the HSDPA speed is one potential weak point when some rivals will soon be topping 10 Mbps. WiFi is supported too, as is Bluetooth 2.1 and USB 2.0. The S8000 measures 109 x 54 x 12mm and weighs a pretty lightweight 110 grams. The 1100 mAh battery provides a maximum talktime of 5 hours on 3G and 8 hours on GSM with around 17 days standby time.

In terms of styling, this is a pretty standard black slabby device bit a few colour highlights on the back, and an unusually shaped navigation button on the front which is just about the only distinctive feature.

The Samsung Jet S8000 should be available from June onwards. In the UK, it is available exclusively on Vodafone where's it is free on contracts of over £20 per month. Elsewhere in Europe, a SIM-free S8000 will be around €500 for the base model or €550 including navigation and mapping, with a rollout happening across the next couple of months.

We think that this is a pretty good phone, and the fast processor in it should make using it a very pleasant experience. Even so, it lacks the sexiness and flexibility of the iPhone, and Samsung may well find itself outmatched.