I was recently given a Samsung Blackjack for work (unlimited data, oh yes) and I have to say I am very happy with the phone. Of course, I’ve never used another “smart phone” but Windows Mobile doesn’t bother me and ActiveSync is your friend when you live out of MS Outlook. I bought a 2gig Micro SD card off of some website (meritline.com, maybe) for $20 shipped so it’s maxed out with storage (until 4gig MSD cards come out and are $20).

To boost download speeds, AT&T in Buffalo upgraded their wireless network from Edge to 3G so surfing the internet is nice. I use the browser-based version of Gmail to access my email and Google has really put a lot into it. I refuse to use Java-based apps on the phone, it’s like being on a crappy island, detached from society and the Gmail App for Windows Mobile doesn’t even seem to support my hosted domain email (I use wnymusic.com and not gmail.com for Gmail email). If that makes sense.

So, as far as decent Windows applications go on the Blackjack, you are limited, but I have found several that make the Blackjack a standalone computer when I’m away from my laptop.

• Yahoo! Go 2.0 – News, Maps, Weather, Flickr from Yahoo all in one place. A very slick application. The Flickr support is nice but when I last tried it, it could not access my storage card which is my default location for saving videos and pictures on the phone.
• vTap – With the 3G connection and an unlimited data plan in place, vTap is useful for accessing online videos. All sorts of video; I watched a mini documentary of some Russian woman stunt pilot.
• SiriusWM5 – As a hardcore Sirius Satellite Radio listener, this is one of the coolest apps on my phone. It basically gets you logged in to your online Sirius account and then streams radio to Windows Media Player. A solid app.
• Palringo – FINALLY a free Instant Messaging app for Windows Mobile. I actually found this last night reading Lifehacker and immediately installed it. 10 minutes later, I got my first IM from Rat down in Pittsburgh. It doesn’t appear to import your contact list but managing my very long contact list via such a small screen would be interesting to say the least. Still, people are able to IM me and it supports all the major IM services (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and Jabber/Gtalk/XMPP).
• MSNBC.com Mobile – Even though they have a web presence, I actually like this app a lot. It makes reading the articles easier than navigating the web. Has all the NBC News video options as well.
• Live Search Mobile – Another app from Microsoft that I love. It has many of the same features the Google Maps and Yahoo! Go apps do but this one does exactly what it should; find places, let you call them and give you mapped out directions. I use it all the time and all over the country.
• Doom – What more needs to be said other than it runs and looks better than it did on the old 486 I started playing doom on 14 years ago.
• PocketNester – A Nintendo emulator that I found to be real nice and easy to use. You’ll have to do some searching for the ROMs of the games on your own.

That about does it and really covers everything I need from such a powerful phone that it doesn’t come with out of the box. You might wonder how I stay productive on the phone for everything else and for those things, I use the mobile web. I’ll post again soon with a list of must have mobile website bookmarks.