I got a new phone a few weeks ago: the Samsung Blackjack, otherwise known as the SGH-i607. It works great with Skweezer, and since it’s a Windows Mobile device, I’ve also gotten a chance to see it in action with the Yahoo! Go and Live applications, both of which have their pluses (Flickr/Maps & Directions respectively) and minuses. Overall I’m very pleased with the new phone though.

One thing that has been a little odd has been the fact that sometimes my network connection has trouble restarting. After the phone has been idle for a while, and more often when I’ve traveled (perhaps switching cell towers?) my phone’s browser would be unable to make any connections. Navigating to new pages would show “Connecting” in the status bar for a few minutes before returning an error. Network-enabled applications such as Yahoo! Go would also stop working, showing time-out errors or “unable to refresh” messages. I called up Cingular AT&T tech support and they told me it was probably a coverage problem: they claimed you need at least four bars to browse the web, whereas you can send SMS and talk with fewer bars of course. That is only half the story, as this problem sometimes crops up even with great signal. Fortunately, I finally found the cause and solution. Read more »