After my somewhat dismissive comments on the BlackJack II I’ve discovered that Samsung’s next leap is pretty significant.

Although the phone in the picture (an SGH-i780 aka “Mirage”) bears a strong resemblance to it’s cousin there’s a couple of clues that not everything is quite the same.

First up is the front facing camera. Okay, it’s a tiny little thing but you might notice it. Then there’s the screen – it’s bigger than the BlackJack II (and unusually it’s a square 320x320 format). Just below the screen is a weird touchpad thing in place or the more traditional D-Pad.

Oh, and I left the last big thing until last… that stylus you see next to the phone… your eyes are not playing tricks… this is a touch device.

Amazingly they packed all this, and 802.11b and g WiFi into a device that is pretty much the same size and weight as the BlackJack II without sacrificing anything – it’s still a 3G and GPS equipped device and even has a noticeably faster processor.

This phone fixes pretty much every complaint that I had with the BlackJack II, and even the keyboard is good enough that I’d consider this to be a better phone for every day than my Shadow (there, I said it!) but… the one thing that I’m not sure I like is the trackpad. In mouse mode (yes, you get an on-screen cursor) it’s just too small a surface to work with, and in 4-way pointer mode I miss the physical “action” of a D-Pad. I’d probably even say I prefer the pearl like rollerball (if you like it on the Blackberry wait until you see it on the VelocityMobile 111 – a Windows Mobile device).

Worse than the trackpad is the fact it still doesn’t come with a standard miniUSB connector/charger.

I’ve only got this for a few days while I work on getting a demo tweaked to fit the layout better but I think I’ll miss it when it’s gone! I won’t miss the connector though.