Review: Samsung Pixon M8800
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Finally Samsung raises the bar for mobile phone camera technology. The new Samsung Pixon M8800 comes equipped with an 8-mega-pixel camera, auto focus, 16 times zoom, face detection and geo-tagging. |
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The Samsung M8800 know as the ‘Pixon’ is Samsung’s second 8 mega pixel camera phone their first offering was the I8510. Samsung have heralded the Pixon as the ‘worlds slimmest 8 mega pixel camera phone’.
The Samsung Pixon has a massive 3.2 inch full Touch Screen 240×400 (WQVGA) featuring haptic feedback technology. The touch screen interface is intuitive and easy to use.
Text input is done through a standard virtual keyboard along with a virtual qwerty keyboard as well as handwriting recognition.
The unique selling point of Pixon is the 8 mega pixel camera which makes the Pixon a direct competitor to the LG Renoir. The camera has a plastic lens with an automatic cover to prevent it from being scratched. Even though the lens is plastic, the Pixon picture quality is still pretty impressive.
For taking photos in dark conditions the Pixon is armed with dual led flashes which is not as effective as a xenon flash, but it will provide for better battery life. Focusing is done automatically for the novice along with automatic ISO. The ISO can be manually changed right up to 1600 for shooting in darker conditions. As well as changing the ISO there is also a Wide Dynamic Range option for tricky lighting conditions.
Like the LG Renoir the Pixon has a 16x digital zoom and no optical zoom. Digital zoom is never going to be good as true optical zoom. But there are some consolations with having a digital zoom, less storage space, more accurate focus and exposure.
There is a rocker switch on the side for zooming in and out along with a capture button. There are many shooting modes including Multi shot / Mosaic Shot / Frame shot / Panorama shot / Smile Shot.
- Multi-shot – Takes a series of photos in one go.
- Mosaic shot – Takes several shots in a row and merges them into on photo.
- Panorama shot – Allows for a series of shots to be taken and smoothly stitched together using the motion sensor for great scenic shots.
- Smile shot – Waits for the subject to smile before taking the shot for happy portrait photos.
Other features include image stabilization for the shaky handed amongst you, Face Link which allows you to tag a persons name to a photo and Blink detection for avoiding catching someone blinking in your image.
The camera also has some interesting photo effects Black&White, Sepia, Negative, Emboss, Watercolour and Outline.
The Pixon camera can also shoot high quality video up to 120 frames per second which can be played back in slow motion and edited on the phone.
There is also a front camera secretly tucked away for video calls using the phones 3G capability, which is HSDPA supporting 7.2Mbps for fast internet access. The NetFront 3.5 web browser is an exceptionally good browser, it supports Java for web pages with rich content. Web browsing can be done portrait or landscape. Like the Renoir the Pixon has an accelerometer, which automatically adjusts the screen to landscape when the phone is titled on its side. The photo viewer and the one full game on the phone Tumbling Dice make use of this feature.
There are other games supplied on the phone but they are just trial versions the full versions are available for a small fee.
The Pixon comes with a GPS receiver and Google maps with location, routing and service finding that combines the Assisted GPS system for exact positioning.
The music player supports MP3, eAAC+, WMA and AMR file formats and has excellent sound reproduction using Samsung’s Digital Natural Sound engine (DNSe). There is also RDS Radio and video player which supports DivX and XVid as well MPEG4 and WMV video.
Like the LG Renoir the Pixon does not support the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, to use your favourite set of headphones you will need to use the adaptor supplied in the box.
The on-board storage is 200mb which is hardly going to store a comprehensive audio collection but it can be expanded up to 8gb using a microSD card. The phone comes supplied with a 1gb microSD card in the box.
Other features of the phone include Bluetooth 2.0 for using devices such as Bluetooth stereo head phones and there is also TV Out support for playing videos on your TV using the necessary cable.
To sum up the Samsung Pixon has impressive picture quality with its 8 mega pixel camera, which could of been better if Samsung had used a glass lens from a reputable manufacturer like Carl Zeis and a xenon flash. Super fast web browsing provided by 3G HDSPA but it lacks Wifi. Touch screen driven functionality and GPS.
The phone has plenty of features a fair amount of storage but in our opinion is not as good as the LG Renoir however it is still a decent phone worth having.
Features of the Samsung Pixon include:
* Quad band GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
* 3G HDSPA
* 3.2 inch WQVGA Touchscreen 256k
* 8.1 Megapixel Camera
* Face detection
* MicroSD memory card slot
* MP3 / Video player
* GPS
* Stereo Bluetooth A2DP Support
* FM radio with RDS
* Bluetooth 2.0 / USB 2.0
* SMS / MMS / EMS / JAVA / WAP 2.0
* MP3 ringtones
* User Memory: 200MB
* 10.67 cm x 5.33 cm x 1.27 cm / 121.9g
* Upto 3.8 Hours Talk Time
* Upto 290 Hours Standby Time
* Embedded JAVA™ games
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