We've already conducted a thorough comparative analysis of cameras integrated into (Sony Ericsson K850i & Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i & Samsung G600 & Nokia N95) and it came clear that the winner is N95 as long as we arean't speaking of macro. The G600 model proved a rather advantageous offer as well, due to the incredibly low price for a device of that class. The K850i model produced an ambiguous impression, advantages neighboring disadvantages - the touch controls are poor, the flashlight isn't something one would dream about, and the video acquisition quality isn't good enough. We even had to fish a commercial, finalized copy of K850i out of one retail stores but the second round of testing only proved the results of the first one. All the flaws were in their place.

It's a real shame that the creator of the famed Cyber-shot series and the best-selling K750i and K790i/K800i models in particular failed to keep their high standards. The N95 now has its price stabilized and thus looks way more attractive to the casual buyer, and people who're short on money but still want to get a fair bargain offering good functionality in the sphere of mobile photography might be looking for a Samsing G600 as well - by the way it's not the flagship model of the Korean company's portfolio but rather a mass product which in essense is a perfectly balanced compromise solution. Samsung G800 is his bigger brother and the real flagship, so today we'll give you a few glimpses (well, quite a few) of the new model, paying maximal attention to its camera module and imaging aspects. It comes with optical zoom and an impressive variety of miscellaneous improvements (mostly hardware ones, since the software platform used in G800 is even weaker than that of G600).

So far optical zoom is only found with a few chosen models, almost none of them belonging to the mass market. The grandpa of the trend is obviously the Sharp company - five years ago their V620SH model supplied with a 2 Mpix camera first boasted a capability to zoom in up to 2x times using improved optics. Most modern phones use digital zoom which naturally corrupts the image in to a degree proportional to the zoom ratio used. The optical zoom is a more advanced solution, using optics instead of digital processing, which results in zero quality losses.

This allows for a number of advaced imaging modifications like scaling the image and catching the right without moving. One of the key characteristics of the optical zoom feature is its ratio. This value define how many times closer the objects in the scene will appear while zoomed in, being in fact a ratio between the minimal and maximal focal distance. The G800 model features a 3x optical zoom ratio, which is a really worthy achievement for a device sporting a thickness of 16.8 millimeters. Well, we won't call it really small - in fact it's just as big as a Nokia N95. Somebody will find this disappointing, but some of the experts say that men tend to choose bigger handsets due to the allegedly more impressive looks of those.

The camera module utilized by G800 isn't something extraordinary, yet it has the quality in the first place. On the other hand it lacks dedicated controls like those found with K850i or N95.

The camera button is middle-sized, both smooth and tight to push and very comfortable in general. A volume control rocker button is found nearby, also functioning as the zoom button. Its location is almost ideal, which contributes a lot to the high camera ergonomics of the G600 model.

Unlike some of the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot devices (K770i, K810i or K850i) the keypad doesn't feature any important camera function symbols placed on the keypad buttons - though that doesn't mean that the keys can't be used as shortcuts to those. FOr instance, the 1 key switches the shooting mode, the * key turns on the flashlight and so on.

However nothing is flawless in the mortal world. The protective camera cover of G800 leaves much to be desired. It sticks out above the surface for about 2 mm (the thickness is 18.5 at that spot) which is even more than with N95. The opening mechanism is too tight, and no finger rest is provided for - in some cases it's the sliding mechanism that opens instead of the cover, the situation is similar to the problem observed with the K770i model which suffers from a similar problem.

Let's compare Nokia N95 to Sony Ericsson K850i:

Another comparison with Nikon Coolpix S1:

Screen

Samsung G800 utilizes a 2,4'' screen powered by a TFT matrix, the color palette comprising some 262K colors. The screen resolution is quite standard for a QVGA phone, being 240x320. A mirror backing prevents the picture from rendering illegible in the direct sunlight. The quality of the screen is amazingly high, maybe it's actually the best one found in its class - the colors look realy natural, screen brightness is nearly ideal too.

Unlike the G600, G800 lacks a luminance sensor. It's hard to say for the sake of what they decided to take it out, it was really useful for saving battery charge let alone the automatical brightness adjustment. Let's hope few customers will get really disappointed with that, it's a minor change after all yet hardly explicable.

Only two brightness settings are available unlike the four observed with its predecessor.

The viewfinder of G800 beats the N95 model easily, let alone the K850i. The software algorith used for transmitting the picture from camera to the screen is far above than just good, the powerful Quallcomm platform doing its best. Maybe Samsung lose a tiny bit of their authority by engaging a third party in supplying them with hardware, but from a purely commercial point of view this approach is winning: lots of people will be eager to buy a cameraphone as good as that.

Nokia N95 / Samsung G800 / Sony Ericsson K850i

Our competition of screen matrixes was won by K850i, also due to a smaller size of the matrix. But there will always be customers dissatisfied with such a modest screen diagonal. The G800 matrix is really good, the only noticeable drawback being the poor view angles - frankly speaking the worst among all the analogues. N95 still looks as the best option due to an even bigger diagonal, good brigtness, contrast and view angles. Not quite the ideal, which is clearly seen throughout the tests, yet it's the most balanced solution among the products in question.

Battery

Samsung G800 utilizes a Li-Ion batter with a capacity of 960 mAh. No support for enhanced batteries, unfortunately. A moderaty duty cycles compising about an hour of talk time, two hours of listening to the music and an hour of working with the rest of the functions G800 proved able to survive as long as two days before it started begging for a recharge, the result is quite up to the modern standards, few users are going to be dissatisfied with that. G600 displays similar results, the K850i is leading here and the N95 is lagging behind.

	Battery Life
Model	Sony Ericsson K850i	Nokia N95	Samsung G600	Samsung G800
Moderate Dury	2-2.5 days	1 day	2 day	1.5-2 days
Мультимедиа-цикл, видео (3GP)	4:22	2:03	3:49	3:06
Multimedia Cycle, Audio (MP3)	16:53	6:56	13:08	10:41

A full recharge lasts for about 2,5 hours. The charge indicator is notable for the following peculiarity: the first two points of the scale don't last long but the last one stays as long as a day.

The emergency charge saving system implemented by Samsung isn't the best solution in our opinion: when the last point of the charge meter fails, some of the device's functionality is blocked and the screen brighness drops drastically. After that the device can live for some extra few hours, but you won't be able to take photos or listen to the music. None of the competitors use anything of the kind in their products, preferring an extra hour of full-fledged functioning to three or four hours of 'undead' existence. Some of the latest firmware revisions for earlier Samsung products do away with this feature as well. We hope there this won't be included in the D880 model - the device is based of the latest revision of the Suwon platform, so there won't be any trouble with updating the firware.

Camera Interface and Settings

The camera can be used both in the folded and unfolded state of the slider, its adjustable in the settings. The camera uses the landscape orientation. There's no separate button for switching between the shooting modes (unlike the E590 model), but pressing the navigation button in any direction brings up a four-item quick menu that includes the following settings:

• Macro
• Timer
• Flashlight
• Icons / Grid

The right soft button is used to access the main settings menuy. Here you can switch between the frontal VGA camera and the rear main module. The shooting modes include Camera, Scene, Camcoder.

Samsung G800 offers the user some 13 (!) scene presets plus the auto mode. It's even more than with N95 and K850i but still fewer than with the most inexpensive digital cameras. Some of the scene options in this menu are grouped by two within a single menu item:

• Auto
• Portait
• Landscape
• Sports
• Party/Indoor
• Beach/Snow
• Sunset
• Dusk/Dawn
• Fall colour
• Wave & Snow
• Night shot
• Against light
• Firework
• Text

As you see, the phone has every necessary scene option one might imagine, in fact there are twice as many scene options as G600 has, the interface looks much more improved in comparison with the G600.

The shooting modes are:

• Single shot
• Multi shot
• Mosaic shot
• Frame shot
• Panorama shot

You should remember that enabling multi shot drops the resolution from 2560x1920 to 320x240. The same goes to the Mosaic shot. The Mosaic mode has 15 variants to choose from. A multi shot can consist of 6, 9 or 15 shots in a series in Normal or High Quality. The Frame option is now included into the shooting mode menu as well. Unusual yet quite logical.

A good variety of photo frames are available (though less than in G600 - 20 against 29) - it's always nice to wrap a picture of yourself in a beautiful frame between sending it to your girlfriend via MMS. Neither Nokia nor Sony Ericsson have ever offerend something of the kind.

The habitual photo resolutions say in their place, unfortunately the choice is even scarcer than with G600:

• 2560x1920 (5M)
• 1600x1200(2M)
• 1280x960(1.3M)
• 640x480

It was rather strange of Samsung to follow the Sony Ericsson in limiting the customer's choice without any justifiable reason. On the other hand the fewer options means the more comfort for the newbies, since navigation is less complicated in this case.

Let's move along. Here are the standard settings for turining on and off macro and flashlight. The latter has an auto mode, though it can't be set to be working permanently - it's only activated prior to the moment of taking the picture and immediately switched off thereafter. The red eye filter is in. The macro mode lacks the Auto setting - you have to find and activate that menu item every time you're planning to do some macro shots. This feature enjoys a better realization with Nokia and Sony Ericsson products.

The G600 also comes with a timer, which works quite all right. The timer intervals are 3, 5 or 10 seconds. A timeout bar indicator and the corresponding numbers are displayed during the delay before shooting, which might be handy yet a light indication would be better anyway.

The G800 model is a sure winner when it comes to the special effects that can be applied to photos:

• Grey
• Sepia
• Negative
• Antique
• Water colour

But that doesn't really matter as much as one might think - all of those features are accessible even in the simplest graphics editors, so the advantage is only perceptible if you're a real mobile paparazzi which spends a lot of time away from his PC. Well, and it's a bit queer that G600 has Emboss and Sketch and G800 doesn't.

A 4x digital zoom serves as a kind of useless addition to the 3x optical zoom, it doesn't look very impressive since the competitors have 22x (N95) and 16x (K850i) digital zoom ratios respectively.

The standard white balance settings include Auto / Daylight / Incandescent / Fluorescent / Cloudy / Sunset while ISO presets comprise values 100 / 200 / 400 / 800. The viewfinder mode is selectable from Regular / Indicator / Guidelines, the camera application icons are customizable as well.

Extra settings include Quality (Super Fine, Fine Normal), Exposition Meter, Action Sounds, Storage Folder and Default Filename.

A casual shot taken at maximum quality settings takes about 1-1,5 Mbytes of space for low-detail night shot to 2-2,5 Mbytes for a detailed daytime photos. That's quite a lot - so don't expect to discover any compression artifacts in your pictures. The following resolutions are available for video shooting:

• 320 x 240
• 176 x 144

Again, G800 proves to be less rich in features than its precursor G600. There's no support for VGA clips. The same framerate of 15 fps is used by K850i. The codecs used are H.263 + AMR NB and MPEG4 + AMR NB. The maximum clip length equals to an hour, it's possible to use the flashlight just as in the same way with the photo mode. Video quality of both G800 and K850i is hardly comparable to N95.

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Gallery

A comfortable way of viewing your photos and videos is a significant bonus to any serious cameraphone. An advanced imaging application is also a good contribution to a cameraphone's functionality, because on lots of occasions you won't find a notebook with Photoshop insalled at hand or a PDA with a similar application. Both N95 and K850i enjoy a brilliantly organized gallery, the Swedish-Japanese solution is even supplied with a motion sensor which switches the picture orientation according to the physical position of the devices. Dynamic animation is widely implemented here, the interface has great looks.

In comparison with the competitors, the gallery of G800 looks a bit poor and functionality isn't sky high as well. The selected photo is just indicated by a humble frame, gallery view modes only count as many as two options: thumbnails on or thumnails off. The animation is minimal, making the gallery look even duller than that of G600. It's hard to tell why this happened to a flaghip model - risking the customer's high opinion is no good since it could harm the prestige of the whole series.

First you select the type of action you want to accomplish and only then you select the files to be processed, which isn't hard at all. The options include View, Send via MMS, E-mail, Bluetooth; Set as a Contact Picture; Use as Wallpaper; Copy and Move; Delete and Rename; Sorting by date, type, name and size; switching view modes - List / Thumbnails. You can also instantly share the file via Bluetooth or send it for printing (both via Bluetooth and USB). The final option is just viewing a file's properties.

The slide show function is rather cheap. If we recall G600, a good variety of modes were available. Let alone the N95 and K850i which are traditionally strong at visualization. G800 only possess a few basic functions in this domain: continous changing of pictures, listing backward and pause. It's even unable to customize the time interval. As long as the software platform is concerned, G800 looks like a downgrade of G600 - there's no support for customizable themes as well. All of the peculiarities will undergo a more detailed examination in the upcoming G800 review.

Imaging

In addition to the rest of features, Samsung G800 comes with the Edit imaging application which allows for some basic photo modifications.

You can both digitally process a saved photo or one transmitted directly from the camera. A total of nine effects are available (Sepia, Negative, Milky, Lighting, Crayon pastel, Oil paint, Blur, Despeckle, Sharpen), two extra filters (Partial blur, Redeye repair), three adjustments (Brightness, Contrast, Colour), three types of transformation (Resize, Rotate, Flip), the Crop tool, Insert Frame, Icon, Object or Text, as well as Print, Send and Bind.

It's hard to figure out why G800 doesn't have the Auto level setting while G600 has.

Shooting

Now it's time to get down to the practice. G600 sports the best performance, hardly yielding to K850i let alone G600 and N95. It takes less than a second after pressing the shoot button to take a picture - one the best focusing interval for a product of tht class. However pictures of moving objects sometimes turn out poor. It's the first time we see a Samsung that has no traces dragging after the objects in the screen during the camera mode. The Qualcomm chipset does its best once again. The same hardware is used in U700, by the way.

Daytime

Daylight shooting rarely poses any difficulty to a good camera, so G800 did the job well. The pictures are really amazing. Please pay attention to the high quality of contrasting details like the foliage on the background of the sky. The only drawback is the halo seen around the light sources, the same problem is found with D880. We hope this is just a temporary defect of the pre-sale sample.

The precision of the focusing is really good desite of its high speed. You can always get on time and catch the moment - the camera application, too, starts almost instantly.

Nighttime

Despite the xenon flash, G800 isn't that good at taking nighttime photos. During nighttime sessions it produces a good percentage of flawed or mediocre shot, the camera volume is very dependent on light. Combined with the repulsion that the G800 optics feel towards moving objects, G800 won't make a good choice for night club goers.

The flashlight enjoys a very smart positioning - no matter how hard you try you won't accidentally block it with your hand. Unfortunately the flashlight is only effective at very short distances; it won't even make a decent lamp for navigating yourself in the dark.

Indoors

Samsung G800 is very dependent on light sources when shooting indoors. If the lighting level is sufficient, the pictures turn out no worse than outdoor ones.

In some cases the camera fails to capture small details while shooting indoors from a distance.

Macro

Samsung G800 does well at capturing even the smallest details in the macro mode. Making a fairly good picture of a document or a visit card is quite a simple task for this model.

The business card recognition function is missing. Probably Samsung decided to reserve that feature exclusively to business-class smartphones and PDA phones.

Optical Zoom Functionality

G800 became the first Samsung device supplied with optical zoom that made it to Europe. Similar functionality was often found with mobile product sold in the Asian region, though. A several specimen of those had fallen in our hands previously, but even in comparison with those the model in question has a serious advantage of having a relatively compact size. This was achieved by placing the zoom lens inside the phone casing which elliminates the necessity of a bulkier collapsible construction. The above mentioned lens cover serves for protecting the camera when you're not using it.

Zoomless / Maximum optical zoom

Samsung make use of their own optics, which is quite unusual for the company. Earlier solutions included optics manufactured by Toshiba, Pentax, etc. One advantage over the Carl Zeiss optics found in Nokia phones is the complete noiselessness which is important for video.

Zoomless / Maximum Optical Zoom / Maximum Digital Zoom

The advantage over the digital zoom is obvious, yet as compared to other solutions implementing optical zoom the quality thereof is average. Well, there's also the 4x digital zoom available but who knows why should one use that? It's not 16x or 22x but only 4x, and that's really pitiful as long as you have a 3x optical zoom at hand.

Portrait shooring

We dedicated a whole chapter in our review to this kind of tests on purpose, for Samsung G800 has a special function allowing the camera to lock on a person's face. It looks much like a target finder on military aircraft - once a face is caught, it's framed and the frame moves along with the face until you switch to another person's face. From the very beginning the frame is white, but it changes from green to red depending on focusing status. We were surprised to learn that this ambitious feature works just fine, though is easily misled by showing to the camera objects which bear even the slightest resemblance with a human face. We can't say that this option provides a real advantage in photo quality, yet it's fun to use and sometimes very handy. Let's compare portrait shots of Samsung G800, Nokia N94 and Sony Ericsson K850i.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

As you see, thanks to the face lock-on feature the photos taken with G800 sport a slightly better sharpness and precision. This might be critical for indoor shots since as we stated above the Samsung camera may behave a little bit weird indoors. But when it comes to portrait shots, G800 is the absolute leader. The silver and bronze medals go to K850i and N95 respectively. Nikon Coolpix S1 is out of the contest due to the fact that it easily beats anyone of the three and is in fact incomparable - note the accuracy of rendering the hair, the color rendering of the warmly lit wall, etc. Here's another proof that even the best cameraphones can't bet an inexpensive digital camera so far.

Image stabilizing

Another exotic function found only with G800 and a few other models. As stated by the manufacturer, the image stabilizer efficiently counteracts the camera shaking by compensating them, guaranteeng crystal clear shots even with longer exposition dalays. We have to dispel these promises - in real life, it doesn't help the cause much. You have to be shooting in a very well-lit environment in order to get crystal clear shots of moving objects with your G800, while indoors it's beter to resort to taking pictures of statics. By looking at the picture below you'll see that this stabilizer feature is no more than just another marketing trick of little practical value. Here's a couple of shots taking while going in a subway car:

One of them was taken with stabilizer on and the other one in the standard mode. But it's really hard to guess which is the one and which is the other.

Сравнение

The rest of the contestants include the closest market competitors of the model: Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i. The given models also utilize 5 Mpix camera modules with auto-focus and have comparable rpices. For a more informative comparison, we also let the Nikon Coolpix S1 digital camera enter the competition, which can give a good idea of the gap in quality between the best cameraphones and middle-end digital cameras. We didn't include the G600 due to the fact that it belongs to another product class and is much cheaper by now. However we already did a comparsion of G600 with Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i in one of the previous articles.

Here the daytime shooting test results for the Samsung G800 camera set to maximum quality compared to analogous pictures taken with Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K850i and Nikon Coolpix S1.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A scene extremely reach in details. The picture is especially remarkable for demonstrating the dirferences in the quality of camera modules. S1 is leading, it took a really beautiful picture with vivid, close to life colors and also coped with all the small details. N95 and K850i share the silver medal, each of the both having certain flaws. The G800 only takes the third place - the picture is greenish and blurry.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A very characteristic example of a contrasting picture. Pay attention to the color rendering - N95 is the closest to life while S1 is the outsider. K850i also did the job badly, and the G800 occupies a middle position in the score.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A picture combining lots of details with a central object standing out against the background of the sky. S1 made all of the pictures bluish, the digital camera failed once again. The K850i has its photos a bit blurred. N95 and G800 display comparable results.

Winner: Nokia N95

Nighttime

Let's show you the results of nighttime shooting with a Samsung G800 set to maximum quality settings and compare them to the results of the rival products: Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K850i и Nikon Coolpix S1.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

Let's begin with a general view. The K850i and G800 displayed most disappointing results in this test. The former failed to render the colors by casting a pink veil all over the street lights. N95 produced a picture in colder colors and coped with the task significantly better. S1 is leading.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

The second night shot, in fact, is also a general view, but having a bit less contrast - it's easily seen by the stall sign. It's obvious that K850i is a loser in this test. And we did use the commercial version of the device. The rest display a more or less acceptable quality, N95 being a bit ahead of G800, but still S1 beats them all.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

An important test involving minimal volume of light, the flashlight is turned of as well. Again, K850i produced a very mediocre picture in this test, but N95 didn't do any better - the lack of light proved to be a tough obstacle to both. Both S1 and G800 coped with the task equally well.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A similar scene with a bit more light, but rather hard for a camera to capture close to life. Another example of how S1 fails in shooting complex scenes: the image got blurred. N95 produced a picture darker than it should be, the G800 failed at color rendering and added a greenish tint, so the quite unexpected winner is K850i.

Winner: Nikon Coolpix S1

Indoors

Let's show a few pictures of indoor shooting of Samsung G800 at maximum quality settings and compare it to analogous photos taken with Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K850i и Nikon Coolpix S1.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

This antiglamorous shot cast the guise away from N95 and K850i which failed to provide enough precision. The latter also poisoned the photo with a sick pink tint. G800 and S1 produced pictures of an almost comparable quality - the former is better at rendering details and the latter captures the colors closer to life - a draw.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A complicated scene with a bright light source in the center. The only device to have failed the test is the K850i model, which added an alien-looking bluish hue to the picture. N95 did the job better than G800, especially in the terms of sharpness and precision. Nevertheless the absolute leader is S1.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A similar scene with a weaker lighting. S1 looks like a failure here, the detalization is really poor. N95 and K850i are roughly equal, N95 being a bit ahead. G800 is the absolute leader in this test.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A typical well-lit room. Another example of how the flawed focusing of S1 works, the K850i being somewhere near as well. N95 and G800 display much better results. The artifacts seen in the last picture are most likely a flaw of the presale sample, we don't expect too see anything of the kind with the final version.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

A scene comprising a lot of small details and light sources. This is clearly the triumph of K850i - it manages to render all the details and lights better than the rivals. S1 occupies the second places, the bronze medal goes to G800 and N95 is an outsider.

Winner: Samsung G800

Macro

Let's see the macro shooting test results of Samsug G800 at maximum quality setting and compare them to analogous pictures taken with Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K850i and Nikon Coolpix S1.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

Taking snaps of documents is the most important aspect of macro shooting, so we decided to begin testing with this kind of task. As you see, all the participants did cope with the task and the N95 model is leading. However this is only true for mid-range macro while at shorter distance N95 proves a loser.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

Here is the classical macro which is a real obstacle to N95, this was already discussed in the previous article devoted to cameraphone tests. G800 and K850i display quite comparable results, but the latter failed to adjust the flashlight in the automatic mode. S1 is leading.

Nokia N95 / Sony Ericsson K850i
Samsung G800 / Nikon Coolpix S1

It's easily deductible from the picture that the macro mode G800 can challenge the same aspect of K850i. At the same time S1 and N95 look less efficient in this sphere, being a bit awkward at taking pictures at ultra short distances.

Winners: Samsung G800 and Sony Ericsson K850i

Behind the stage

Some additional notes should be made regarding the miscelanneous features. G800 features blogging support which is first seen on a Samsung phone while Nokia and Sony Ericsson have been utilizing such functionality for quite a long time. The Korean developers use the innovative ShoZu solution. It supports a high catalogue capacity, being able to communicate with up to 22 blog types. Support list includes LiveJournal, Vox, Flickr and a number of exotic blog types. Unfortunately, there's no way to create a new blog from scratch using the phone, the application only serves as a data transmitter, the rest of the features are only accessible via the web browser in manual mode. Besides, you can't post photos transmitted right from the camera the very moment after they were taken, you have to enter the gallery each time instead. When all the options are set correctly, the application is very easy to use and it takes just a couple of seconds to do anything.

The loading times might be a big too long due to the slow EDGE and GPRS services used depending on the operator, while N95 has a full support for Wi-Fi. If you own a number of blogs, the solution will surely be to your liking, the implementation is good enough to please any blogger. The lack of such functionality is what made G600 look like a loser against the background of K850i and N95 in the aspect of web functionality. Now Samsung no longer looks inferior to Nokia and SE in this sphere, the disadvantages and advantages of all the products in question are neatly balanced. The LiveJournal support is probably the biggest advantage coming with the Samsung blogging feature.

Another interesting feature found with G800 is the automatical resolution adjustment depending on the amount of memory left. This function is both applicable to the memory expansion card and the integrated user memory alike. If you don't have enough memory to save a photo taken at maximum resolution, you receive a corresponding notice and the device automatically resizes the photo and switches the resolution to a lower value for further shots as well. Considering that the status icons aren't displayed by default, you can miss the status change and take a series of extremely important photos at a lower resolution than required. Somewhat of an challengeable innovation.

Samsung decided not to put any really nice extras into the sales package, like a Bluetooth headset or something like that. It would be logical enough to see some accessories underlining the status of the model inside, like a tripod that's shipped with E590. Unfortunately you won't even find a memory card bundled. A really disappointing surprice.

SMAPE's opinion

Samsung G800 sports great looks, it's probably the best looking top-class cameraphone available on the market. The dimensions and weight are a bit too high, but some of the male customers will find it quite all right - a authoritarian-looking handset indeed, which are so scarce now. The challengeable construction of the camera cover is a really nasty drawback, but the rest of elements are constructed and positioned in a way that gives the model great ergonomics. The camera itself isn't a revolutionary innovation, the software implementation of camera functionality isn't that great and the video quality isn't the best either. But the photo quality is almost ideal, it can easily challenge that of Nokia N95, and as far as it goes to macro, Samsung G800 can challenge K850i here as well. Even Nikon Coolpix S1 sometimes yields to the power of G800 photography. The model is also remarkable for a goof flashlight and a unique feature not to be found with any of the competitive products - the optical zoom. This is what makes G800 truly unique. As we see it, G800 will enjoy less popularity than the best selling G800 due to a much higher price (500 euro), but it will surely find an appropriate market niche and sell well. A more general review of the model comprising all of its aspects will be published at our site in the nearest future.

Author: Dmitriy Ryabinin, dm@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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