Review The main selling point for the Samsung S8000 Jet isn’t its OLED screen, or its 5Mp Camera, or even its sleek and compact good looks. For this model, Samsung is highlighting a major element of the modern multimedia phone that often gets overlooked – the processor. The Samsung S8000 Jet comes with an industry-leading 800MHz processor – more powerful even than those on the big smartphones – which should make everything about it run faster and smoother.
Samsung’s S8000 Jet: it’s all about the processor
Appearance hasn’t been overlooked either, as the Samsung S8000 Jet has a sleek, compact look and at 109 x 54 x 12mm and 110g it’s really quite a petite slip of a thing. However, in the hand it feels a little cheap and plasticky to be honest, and though we wouldn’t necessarily hold that against it if the specs are up to scratch, we know many prefer something that feels more substantial in exchange for your hard-earned.
The 3.1in active-matrix OLED touchscreen takes up most of the real estate on the front and it is eye-searingly beautiful, with an extremely sharp 480 x 800 resolution. Above it are 0.3Mp Camera for video calls, light sensor and loudspeaker, while the space below is taken up with call start and stop buttons and a hexagonal navpad. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Research in Motion’s latest offering in the BlackBerry Curve range is described as an entry-level model. Indeed, it doesn’t have a touch screen, GPS, or even a 3G network connection. However, it is a slim and efficient little work horse at a reasonable price with Wi-Fi, a 2Mp Camera and all of BlackBerry‘s push email know-how built in.
It’s not the smallest BlackBerry so far – that would be the Pearl with its numeric keypad and two letters for each key – but the 8520 is a full Qwerty keyboard design. Yet, at just 109 x 60 x 14mm and a lightweight 106g, it is smaller and lighter than its predecessors; the Bold, the Curve 8900 and the 8320.
On the front it looks standard BlackBerry, with its well laid out four-line Qwerty keyboard, plus a line of buttons for call start and stop, menu and back. The keyboard has the same layout as that on the BlackBerry Curve 8900 but just a little smaller, and without the older phone‘s chrome trim. Moreover, there was no problem finding the keys with our thumbs, for either one or two-handed messaging. Read the rest of this entry »
Review LG’s latest cam phone is an extremely sleek and suave looking device with a feature-packed 8Mp Camera, multi-touch screen, Wi-Fi, A-GPS and motion sensor. Despite the name, this isn’t a smart phone, and isn’t intended to be all things to everyone – it’s focus (sorry) is very clearly on photography.
LG’s Viewty Smart
At first glance the Viewty Smart cuts a dashing figure. It measures 109 x 56 x 12mm and weighs 102g, which makes it an exceptionally slim and fairly lightweight handful for an 8Mp camphone. The front is dominated by the 3in touchscreen and has but a single button – the silver or gold-coloured bar that stretches across the phone beneath the screen. In most situations, this acts as a home key.
Around the sides are a Camera button, volume rocker, power/headphone socket (LG’s own), microSD card slot and shortcuts button, with a power/phone lock button on top. From the back the Viewty Smart looks very much like a standard LG digital Camera, with its brushed chrome finish, Schneider-Kreuznach lens and LED flash. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD comes with a weight of expectation upon it. As the first cameraphone claiming to be capable of recording HD video, it sets itself up to be challenged. Fortunately, for the most part it comes through. With its stonking 8Mp Camera and huge OLED screen, this smartphone has what it takes to be an iPhone alternative that can really deliver on media.
Samsung’s i8910 Omnia HD
When it comes to watching video, big is generally better, and the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD makes it clear that watching video is very much what it’s all about. A large slab of a handset, at 123 x 58 x 13mm and 144g, it feels absurdly wide at first, until you realise that 13mm isn’t all that thick – we could get used to it.
Undoubtedly, the 3.7in OLED touch screen is a stunner, with 16m colours and a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. The pixel resolution doesn’t sound particularly impressive for a screen this size, but the screen technology it’s based on means it looks strikingly vibrant. The Omnia HD uses an Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display that delivers a faster pixel switching response than standard OLED. Read the rest of this entry »
Pic Review All cell-phone cameras are not created equal – even the three-megapixel cameras in the recently released iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre. And I’ve got the photos to prove it.
Our recent review of the iPhone 3GS went into some detail about the quality of the Camera in Apple‘s new smartphone. But I also wanted to see how it stacked up against the Palm Pre, how much of an improvement it is over the much-derided Camera in the iPhone 3G, and whether upgrading an iPhone 3G from Software 2.2.1 to 3.0 can help that phone‘s imaging abilities.
So I loaded up four phones and one Camera and visited San Francisco’s downtown patch of greenery, the Yerba Buena Gardens. There, I took over 200 shots to discover how each performs under ideal conditions: a bright, sunny day.
My test cameras phones were an iPhone 3G running iPhone Software 2.2.1, an iPhone 3G and an iPhone 3GS running iPhone Software 3.0, and a Palm Pre running Palm webOS 1.0.3.
I also brought along an aging Nikon D70 DSLR, just to find out how images from a real Camera compare to those from a pocket convenience. I used an AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED lens and set the Nikon to shutter-priority mode at 1/400 of a second. I set white balance to automatic and ISO to 200. And to be even mildly fair, I shot in JPEG, not RAW.
My findings can be summarized as follows:
1. Upgrading an iPhone 3G from iPhone Software 2.2.1 to 3.0 provides a welcome improvement in image quality. Essentially, image quality takes a step up from “sucks” to “sucks less.”
2. The iPhone 3GS’s three-megapixel Camera is a noticeable improvement over the two megapixel Camera in the iPhone 3G – and the differences are much more than mere megapixelage.
3. The Palm Pre’s three-megapixel Camera takes crisp, well-focused images, but it’s a finicky little fellow with maddeningly inconsistent white balance.
4. And here’s my “Well duh!” finding: even a five-year-old six-megapixel DSLR could easily out-image any of its phone-based competition, not only in detail but also in overall exposure and color balance.
