Hardware implementation

Samsung U900 sports a high-quality camera unit, however a certain difference from the one employed by G600 can be seen; the range of features is the same for the both, though the photo quality of G600 is slightly higher. U900 being two millimeters slimmer than G600, a more compact, simplified camera module is expected to be in used. The camera is entirely sunken in the handset's body, being the most practical solution for a slider. The lens is completely protected from grease and damage. A small self portrait mirror is found nearby, neighboring the LED flash. The latter is rather weak, hardly comparable to the powerful xenon units.

In the viewfinder mode, the screen has an unpleasantly low refresh rate, much the same true about G600. The mentioned G800 had a much better realization of this moment, the refresh rate being even better than in Nokia N95. The focusing and image acquisition rates are rather low as well, in this sense the device yields to most rivals, especially N82 and K850i.

Camera interface & settings

The camera is concealed within the upper half of the slider, you can only take shots in the open state. The camera interface sports a horizontal orientation, the secondary screen featuring four extra icons during the shooting:

• Macro mode on / off
• Timer
• Flash
• Exposure

The controls are very convenient in use, for instance it takes but a brief touch on the corresponding screen icon (or a tap on the 0 button) to activate the macro mode, you don't have to interact with any of the menus to do that. The downside is that the high sensitivity of the touch-responsive surface often leads to stray strokes.

The left navigation buttons calls up the gallery, the right one brings up the settings bar. The screen is very informative in the viewfinder mode: the current resolution, the flash and macro activation status, the remaining number of shots are all indicated. The interface is almost the same with G800, save for a few minor exceptions. Some of the features have been simplified – U900 is definitely not meant to be the ultimate cameraphone in Samsung's portfolio.

Samsung U900 offers the user some eight (plus Auto) scene presets. It's even more than in N95 and K850i but still fewer than in the most inexpensive digital cameras. G800 also has more – a total of 13. Some of the scene options in this menu are grouped by two within a single menu item:

• Auto
• Portait
• Landscape
• Sports
• Sunset
• Dusk/Dawn
• Night shot
• Against light
• 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 menu comprises:

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

It's important to keep in mind that serial shooting reduces the maximum resolution from 2560x1820 to 640x490. The same goes to the Mosaic shot. By the way, the latter comes in 18 different options! As for the multi shot option, the choice lies between 6, 9 and 15 shots in Normal or High quality. The often separated Frame menu item here belongs to the shooting modes menu, which is a bit unusual.

The available photo frames are traditionally abundant, though there are less of them than in G600 – 20 versus 29, which can sometimes be quite amusing, since nothing of the kind is found neither by Sony Ericsson nor by Nokia.

The traditional resolutions are quite expectedly in, though unfortunately they are even fewer than in G600:

• 2560x1920 (5M)
• 2048x1536 (3M)
• 1600x1200(2M)
• 1280x960(1.3M)
• 640x480 (0.3M)

This was quite of Samsung to follow the doubtful path of Sony Ericsson, limiting the user's choice because of some undisclosed reasons. Probably this should help a novice out, making things less sophisticated.

Moving on. Next come the standard options allowing to turn the macro mode on/off and activate/deactivate the flash, which can be engaged in the auto mode but can't be working all the time long, only switching on at the moment of shooting. The red eye filter is included. The macro mode can't be set to Auto, which is quite inconvenient when it comes to capturing small details – Nokia and Sony Ericsson had a better way with this.

U900 also possesses a timer with optional intervals of 3, 5 and 10 seconds. A bar indicating the resting time is displayed on the screen, duplicated with numerical indication. Both are hardly visible from distance – the phone would be better off with some kind of light indication.

The variety of post-processing effects applicable to the photos leaves no ground for reproach, beating N82 and K850i:

• 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 U900 has Emboss and Sketch and G800 doesn't.

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.

In addition to this, a couple of other interesting modes are available: face detection and image stabilization. In a fashion similar to G800, U900 allows for a special face lock-on feature. The object which is supposed to be the person's face is first caught in a special frame which becomes the focus point of the shot, following anywhere around as the face moves. The frame's initial color is white, changing to red or green depending on the focusing status. The program acts surprisingly smart, though can be easily deceived with a poster or photo. In the majority of cases, though, this gives only a marginal improvement in quality, though occasionally this proves useful.

The face detection function offers a slightly crisper picture. In general, the indoor performance of the phone's camera leaves quite a bit to be desired. Here comes a sample photo taken in Samsung company's office with the face detection function activated.

Yoonsoo Kim, the executive manager of the Russian division of Samsung's telecom department.

Another interesting feature found with U900 is the automated 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 a disputable innovation.

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

We prefer to omit a detailed description of the way this feature is implemented in U900 since the quality is even below basic, just a bit better than K850i and almost useless… unless you faced an alien and have nothing better than your phone to take a video. Undoubtedly, N82 offers a much better video quality.

Gallery

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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 installed 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 U900 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 thumbnails 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 apply 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. U900 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, U900 looks like a downgrade of G600 - there's no support for customizable themes as well.

Imaging

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In addition to the rest of features, Samsung U900 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 Attach.

It's hard to figure out why U900 doesn't have the Auto level setting while G600 has.

Image stabilization

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Another intriguing improvement introduced by Samsung is the U900's image stabilization feature. As stated by the company, while activated, this senses even the slightest shake of the camera and employs a compensatory algorithm, effectively negating the undesired effects even with longer exposition periods. 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 U900, while indoors it's better to resort to shooting static objects only. To our mind, this feature is nothing but a marketing trick intended to attract buyers.

Mobile Blogging

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Outside the topic, a number of miscellaneous additions to the imaging service are to be noted out. In particular, one of them is an enhanced support for blogging, which first debuted in G800. The Korean developers adopted a ShoZu mobile blogging solution, comprising some 22 supported blog services, ranging from LiveJournal, Vox, Flickr to some titles we previously had no notion of. Unfortunately, there's no way to register a new blog right from the phone, the application only serves for posting and photo uploading. Also you can't upload a photo right from the camera, instead you always have to enter the gallery, find the photo and then proceed with uploading, which will take you for a few extra seconds.

The load times, to put it frankly, take too long because of the slow EDGE/GPRS protocols used unless your regional carrier supports 3G (which is supported by U900 itself). An owner of several blogs would surely benefit from using a U900, the lack of this function was especially disappointing in G600 while the rival K850i and N95 were supporting it. Now Samsung reached a parity with Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The uncontestable advantage of U900 is the native support for the overly popular LiveJounal blogging service.

Sample shots, comparison with Nokia N82

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So let's pass to the shooting session. All the shots were taken at Auto settings. The photos are much more self-explaining than words might be, so we politely relieve ourselves of any further unnecessary talk here.

Daytime shooting

Samsung U900 / Nokia N82

At night

Samsung U900 / Nokia N82

At night, the U900 camera often fails to capture the image correctly due to the prolonged exposure period which often leads to blurring..

Macro

Samsung U900 / Nokia N82

Indoors

Samsung U900 / Nokia N82

SMAPE's opinion

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It's important to understand that U900, unlike the rest of 5 Mp cameraphones available on the market, is primarily concerned with the immediate image effect, camera features coming only second. Of course, the camera still holds very strong positions among comparable samples from other models. In the majority of cases, the photo quality is comparable to that offered by G600, which is just perfect for a fashion-focused product. Until Sony Ericsson C902 arrives, the U900 model will stay the only fashion handset with such a functionality available on the market.

Our judgment on U900 camera is pretty close to our opinion about G600 – the quality isn't ideal, though in a few aspects the model excels its competitors. Nokia N82 stays the best option for an ultimate cameraphone, unmatched in nighttime shooting due to the powerful flash. Its camera offers a maximum depth of detail, brightness and vividness of shots. The Finnish-made phone also offers a video quality only challengeable by a small margin by LG Viewty.

At the same time, N82 occupies a very specific niche remote from the rest of top cameraphones, being in fact a full-fledged smartphone with lots of capabilities which are missing from the rival devices' feature lists: an integrated GPS unit, Wi-Fi allowing for quick phone-to-web photo uploads, and a number of miscellaneous improvements. The powerful image impact of U900 is missing, though. It is obvious that Samsung are addressing a different target audience more concerned with the prestige factor than actual capabilities. At the same time, the company is putting an end to the outdated concept of a designer phone necessarily being cut in the technical aspects to a medium-to-low level as compared to its more technology-specific, less pretentiously looking counterparts from different segments.

If you are looking for a posh handset that doesn't sacrifice any of its functionality to the good looks, U900 is the best and only option so far. The KF600 model by LG inspired by a similar concept still has but a mere 3.2 Mp, and C902 by SonyEricsson is still a pending release (let alone a different form factor, namely the regular candy bar). Samsung were succeeded in creating an organic combination of image and technology which will surely enjoy a great demand on the market, entering the bestseller chart in the next couple of months.

Author: Anton Spiridonov, editor@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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