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Later this week, Cingular Wireless will shuffle up its smartphones deck with the addition of the first Windows Mobile device to support the carrier's UTMS/HSDPA high-speed data network. The name of the soon-to-be-released smartphone is BlackJack, and it is built by Samsung.

BlackJack, also known as the SGH-i607, is an update to an earlier model, the SGH-i320, available in Europe since the summer, but with the chief advancement being the addition of 3G. Like the i320, BlackJack is a slim and compact communicator with a QWERTY thumb-keyboard built on the Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphone platform.

This means, like competitive devices from Verizon Wireless, the Motorola Q and T-Mobile, Dash, BlackJack doesn't feature a touch screen and is designed to view but not edit Microsoft Office documents. But unlike similar devices which use an application called ClearVue, BlackJack leverages Picsel Viewer, which is generally regarded as an improvement as a Microsoft Office viewer.

The quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM smartphone measures 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.5 inches (113 x 59 x 11.8 millimeters) and weighs a mere 3.5 ounces (100 grams). In addition to being a world phone, BlackJack will drop down to Cingular's more widely available 2.5G EDGE data network where UTMS/HSDPA isn't available.

BlackJack has a 2.3-inch, QVGA (320 x 240 pixel) and 65k color display, Bluetooth 2.0 with support for stereo headsets, a microSD slot for up to 2 GB of extra storage, 128 MB of ROM, 64 MB of RAM (31 MB user-available), a 220 MHz Samsung processor, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. For navigation, there’s a scroll wheel and cursor keys.

With its keyboard, BlackJack is geared — like other communicators, including the Q and Dash, the Symbian-based Nokia E62 (also offered by Cingular), Treo (both Windows Mobile and Palm OS types) and the BlackBerry, which all these other devices emulate to some degree—towards messaging. In addition to the inclusion of Microsoft Direct Push technology, it is compatible with Good Mobile Messaging and Cingular Xpress Mail.

BlackJack also offers over-the-air synchronization of calendar, contact and to-do lists and access to enterprise applications. Of course, users can IM with bundled support for AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo!, and send text messages as well.

In terms of multimedia, BlackJack delivers Cingular Music, a comprehensive audio serve with access to online subscription music content from eMusic, Napster and Yahoo. Cingular also delivers 25 XM Radio channels for $9 per month, music videos, a MusicID service that automatically identifies a song playing in the background through audio-recognition technology, and more. There's also support for Cingular Video, the operator’s on-demand streaming video service.

When Cingular ships BlackJack later this week, it will go for $199.99 with a two-year activation and unlimited data plan.