Samsung M8800 Pixon is another cameraphone on the market with full 8 megapixel sensor, 3”.2” touchscreen and much, much more.
Introduction:
The new Samsung M8800 Pixon is the direct successor of the very popular Samsung F480 and as such it has its best features and a few new ones. With phones such as Samsung i900 Omnia, Sony Ericsson C905 or HTC Touch HD the market is a lot more competitive now, but the Samsung M8800 Pixon with its quad-band GSM support, 3G with HSDPA and 200 MB of built-in memory together with microSD card slot and plenty of camera features will surely finds its place.
Samsung M8800 Pixon pros:
+ 3.2″ 256K-color TFT LCD touchscreen display with WQVGA resolution
+ 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and lens protection
+ Camera geo-tagging, auto-panorama shot, face;
+ WVGA video recording at 30fps
+ Slimmest 8MP phone
+ 3G with HSDPA support
+ Smile and blink detection, digital image stabilization
+ GPS receiver
+ Support for DivX, XviD and MP4 video player
+ TV out functionality
+ FM radio with RDS
+ Bluetooth and USB v2.0
+ 200 MB internal memory
+ Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard
Samsung M8800 Pixon cons:
- No Wi-Fi, GPS for geotagging only
- Stylus as dongle only, no stylus compartment
- Camera performance could be better
- No smart dialing
The design:
Samsung M8800 Pixon measures 107.9 x 54.6 x 13.8 mm and weighs 121 grams so it is the slimmest of all recent 8 megapixel phones. When you add to it that it has large, 3.2-inch touchscreen with WQVGA resolution it does indeed sound tempting. The overall built quality of the cell phone is very good as it feels very solid and does not produce any troubling sounds. The front of the phone is, obviously, dominated by the large touchscreen, which maybe is not as functional as the one found in the Apple iPhone, but is still better that some of the older Samsung cell phones. The direct sunlight legibility has improved immensely when compared to let’s say Samsung F480. Under the display there are only three hard buttons: a black, round one and the Call and End buttons which surround it. Above the display is the secondary, video call camera, the earpiece and ambient light detector. At the back of Samsung M8800 Pixon is the 8 megapixel camera lens with a protective cover, LED flash and the loudspeaker grill. The right side of the phone houses the dedicated camera key and volume rocker. The left side houses the microSD card slot, Hold key, together with the Shortcuts menu key. At the bottom you will find only the mouthpiece and lanyard eyelet.
Performance:
As I mentioned before the sun legibility has improved and it quite nice in the Samsung M8800 Pixon so that won’t be a problem. Also the reception and voice quality are of top quality. But the landmark feature of Samsung M8800 Pixon is the 8 megapixel camera, so let’s get to that. There are already a few different mobiles which offer 8 megapixels so it is relatively easy to show
the Samsung M8800 Pixon’s good and bad sides by comparison. And so it turns out that the LED flash is not quite suitable for night shooting, and although the photos are generally well saturated and with little noise it seems that other 8 megapixel mobile phones, like for example Sony Ericsson C905 have more detail at a similar price. It does not mean that photos taken with Samsung M8800 Pixon are of poor quality. The photos look good and are for sure better that photos taken with some camcorders, but if you strive for perfection you might want to chose a different phone, or a digital camera, like Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T77.
Menus / ease of use:
The Samsung M8800 Pixon has standard Samsung menu layout with quite pretty interface. Although it does not allow too much customization it is easy to grasp and sufficiently functional. The main menu is displayed as a 4×3 grid of icons, whereas the submenus as usual as a list. What I dislike about my old Samsung is the lack of multitasking, fortunately the Samsung M8800 Pixon has it so the Java applications can be minimized and you can work on a few things at a time.
The phonebook can store up to 2000 contacts with multiple entry fields for each contact. Of course, you can assign a ringtone to a given contact or a whole group of contacts. The phone has fields for a few e-mail addresses, URLs, notes and photos of each contact.
The messaging is quite easy and as you have three different typing options it should be suitable to everyone’s needs. You can type the text using the standard 12 key keyboard, full QWERTY keyboard in the landscape mode, or handwriting recognition. The email client is very easy to use and supports POP and IMAP. Also the file browser is very nice and although you have some folders of different file types you do not necessarily have to stick to it as the Samsung M8800 Pixon will work with them wherever they are, and equally as quickly.
Selected Samsung M8800 Pixon features and specifications:
GENERAL
2G Network
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network
HSDPA 2100
DISPLAY
Type
TFT touchscreen, 256K colors
Size
240 x 400 pixels, 3.2 inches
- Accelerometer sensor
RINGTONES
Type
Polyphonic, MP3
Customization
Download
Vibration
Yes
MEMORY
Phonebook
1000 contacts, Photo call
Call records
Yes
Card slot
microSD (TransFlash), up to 8GB
- 200 MB internal memory
DATA
GPRS
Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
HSCSD
No
EDGE
Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G
HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps
WLAN
No
Bluetooth
Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port
No
USB
Yes, v2.0, microUSB
FEATURES
Messaging
SMS, MMS, Email
Browser
WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Games
5 + Downloadable
Colors
Black
Camera
8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, video(WVGA@30fps, QVGA@120fps), flash; secondary videocall camera
- Built-in GPS receiver
- A-GPS function
- Camera geo-tagging, auto-panorama shot, face, smile and blink detection, advanced shake reduction
- DivX/XviD/H.263/H.264/WMV/MP4 player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/AMR player
- SRS (Surround Sound System) Virtual 5.1CH
- TV out functionality
- Java MIDP 2.0
- FM radio with RDS
- Organizer
- Office document viewer
- Built-in handsfree
- Voice memo/dial
BATTERY
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
Stand-by
Up to 290 h
Talk time
Up to 3 h 40 min
Other recently reviewed mobile phones:
Samsung L700, Samsung M3200 Beat s, Samsung B2700, Samsung i900 Omnia, Samsung U800, Samsung G400 Soul, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Sony Ericsson G705.