Earlier last week I had to pop into Garden City Hospital for a 24-hour EEG (Electroencephalogram, pronounced ē-lek′trō-en-sef′ă-lō-gram) and I took the opportunity to avail my time by really tinkering with the i600 Blackjack.

With the all-clear from the Neurologist that the cellphone signal wouldn't affect the test I set off with a mission to get to know the i600 really well.

It's at this point that I have to indicate that I've always been a fan of touch screen devices. From my first Compaq iPaq H3630 to my latest HTC TyTn, most devices/phones have had a touch screen with stylus input. This therefore has proved to be the one major issue I've experienced with the i600, the lack of a touch screen and stylus.

Now don't get me wrong, the i600 can stand really well on its own without it, but if you're used to a touch screen device, make yourself ready to be a bit frustrated. This was especially true while browsing the internet as the screen is just a bit too small for the most common web-based tasks.

The joystick pad and scroll wheel on the i600 seems to work well together, but watch out if you have big fingers. I did find that I tended to press slightly off key and was either sent to the home screen or left to the fate of one of the More/Done/Back/Menu options. I quickly found out that the return button will become your friend in the beginning.

Similarly, the QWERTY keyboard is a must for any business phone but the keys are just a tad too small.

One last bit of criticism, although not entirely Samsung's fault, was that the phone constantly kept on searching for a network signal which interfered with my earphones. I think the EEG spiked every time I heard and reacted to the pulsating tone of the network signal being acquired. This also meant that the battery life was severely affected.

I managed to capture some fairly good pictures whilst confined to the hospital bed. However, as I mentioned before the lack of some sort of night shot mode or flash on the camera meant that few of the dimly lit shots made it into my favourites collection. Why not pop over to my Flickr set for some pictures taken with the Samsung SGH-i600 while in hospital.

In my next post I'll focus on some of the more positive points but I do have to say that at least I managed to score 848 in Megashift Bubble Breaker...