Samsung G800 Review

The world's first phone to offer a 5 megapixel camera with optical zoom, the G800 sets the benchmark for camera phones. It's also a beautifully designed slide phone that's fully equipped with an MP3 player, FM radio, accelerated 3G (HSDPA), 160 Mbytes of internal memory plus a memory card slot, and Bluetooth wireless connectivity.
Samsung have taken the phone world by storm by announcing at the end of October 2007 the release of the world's first 5 megapixel camera with optical zoom in a mobile phone. If the plan was to draw attention away from the release of the iPhone, then this has certainly done the trick! Launching in the UK on 12th November 2007, the G800 will be the most advanced camera phone in the world.

Samsung have pulled off both a technological and design marvel with the G800. Its closest rivals are the Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i, which both have 5 megapixel cameras. But the G800 trumps them with the introduction of a 3x optical zoom. An optical zoom is common in dedicated digital cameras, but is very rare in camera phones, because of size constraints. It enables the camera lens to zoom into a scene retaining the full 5 megapixel resolution. By contrast, the digital zoom used in the N95 and K850i (and other camera phones) loses resolution when zooming. The G800 is also the first Samsung phone to have a real xenon flash instead of the weaker LCD flashes usually seen in camera phones. Samsung are one of the key manufacturers of digital cameras, and they have clearly used their expertise in the field to create a world beater with the G800. Other new features that have been imported from the digital camera world are face detection, and Wide Dynamic Range (WDR). Face detection detects the presence of a face in a subject and adjusts the exposure and focus to optimise the appearance of the face.

However, we have to point out that judging from our user reviews, a lot of people have trouble getting good quality pictures from the G800, particularly in low lighting conditions. How can we explain this? One issue that Samsung really need to sort out is to make the highest resolution the default setting on their camera phones, because the default setting is low resolution. If you don't change the setting, you're effectively using a VGA camera! Another problem is that the G800 incorporates a lot of camera features (anti-shake, face detection, WDR, ISO settings, etc) and this means lots of settings to worry about and lots of things potentially to go wrong. So if you're looking for a point-and-shoot camera, look elsewhere. We've decided to deduct one point from our rating for this reason. Many of these comments also apply to the Sony Ericsson K850i, which has also generated a lot of complaints from our users about the camera quality - again in low lighting conditions. Our conclusion is that phone manufacturers should concentrate on making their camera phones as simple to use as possible, as juggling settings isn't really what you want to be doing with a camera phone. But for camera enthusiasts, we still rate the G800 as one of the top 3 camera phones of 2008 (the Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i being the other two.)
As you can see from the photos, not only is this the highest spec camera phone, but it's also a sexy-looking slider that beats its rivals hands down in terms of looks. It may not be the slimmest phone around, but it's certainly more compact than the N95 and is a good size for two-handed camera use. Turn the phone over and the back is like a real digital camera, complete with a sliding lens cover. The secret to making such a compact device is that the optical zoom is an inner zoom, where the lens does not extend outside the body of the phone.

The G800 also has a new camera Graphical User Interface which provides the same environment as a digital camera when using the camera function on the phone. An On Screen Display shows various camera indicators in a horizontal preview mode. The large 2.4 inch LCD display is ideal for viewing images. There's a built-in picture editor, and direct printing to a Pictbridge-compatible printer is supported. High quality video recording is also available, and a built-in video editor is provided too.

As well as the photographic functions, the G800 incorporates all of the features seen in previous high-end Samsung phones. The music player supports all major formats (MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3-AAC+, WMA formats) and wireless Bluetooth stereo headsets. A stereo FM radio is also included. The G800 is superbly equipped with memory too: 160 Mbytes of internal memory is sufficient to hold around 40 music tracks, and you can expand this with a microSD memory card.

Connectivity is excellent too, with support for Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 and TV-Out. Interestingly the G800 is a 3G phone too, in fact it supports the latest high-speed 3G nicknamed 3.5G. Specifically, the 3G implementation is 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, which offers download equivalent to broadband speeds. A web browser is built-in, and the phone can handle RSS feeds and mobile blogging. Email with support for attachments is available and a document viewer can view most common file formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint & PDF).

The G800 is an outstanding phone. After a year in which Samsung appeared to stumble, at the close of 2007 it has launched a product that sets the standards in camera phone for the year ahead.

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Features of the Samsung G800 include:

* 5 megapixel camera phone with 3x optical zoom, autofocus and Xenon flash
* Video camera with built-in video editing
* Display: TFT, 256k colours, 320 x 240 pixels (2.4 inches)
* MP3 player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3-AAC+, WMA formats)
* Stereo FM radio
* Speakerphone
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (POP3 / SMTP / IMAP4)
* Document viewer
* Java games (Java MIDP 2.0)
* Personal organiser functions
* Offline mode
* WAP 2.0, GPRS Class 10, EDGE
* High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps) - 3.5G
* xHTML web browser, RSS feeds, mobile blogging
* Memory: 160 Mbytes plus microSD memory card slot
* Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, TV-Out
* Triband (GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900) plus 3G
* Size: 102 x 52 x 19 mm
* Weight: 134g