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It’s an 8-megapixel camera, it’s a multimedia player… it’s the new Samsung Pixon. The latest model from the Korean company falls in the highest-class and is a direct rival to the Renoir by LG. It’s also one of the many contenders for the title “King of the multimedia phones”, which is currently held by the iPhone. Under the Pixon’s hood you’ll find many features, including an 8-megapixel camera marketed as “better than an actual camera” and multiple video file formats in order to play clips without having to convert them. The only thing it lacks specification-wise is Wi-Fi and global 3G. 
Design The Pixon is advertised as the slimmest 8-megapixel phone, though certainly not the slimmest of all. Though it shares the same form-factor as the iPhone and OMNIA, the Pixon is considerably thicker than its two rivals. Unfortunately today’s technology has not reached the level needed to hide an 8-megapixel module and a whole bunch of extras in an extremely slim body. Do not think that Pixon is “fat”, but it doesn’t have the same profile as the fashion conscious phones on the market. Since the lens and the bottom are also protruding (resembling a regular camera), when placed next to the INNOV8 it is nearly as thick, but feels slimmer in the hand. This makes it slightly thicker than the rival Renoir, although in theory it’s the other way around. Don’t get us wrong, the Pixon is not fat, but is not as slim as the iPhone or OMNIA. Its design would not win an award, and it’s the typical multifunctional model. Nevertheless, it is user-friendly and well made. The Pixon is heavier than the Renoir, but that gives it a massive feeling. 
The overall appearance of the phone is characterized by its form factor and reminds us of other models with large displays, taking up most of the face of the phone. In our case, it is 3.2” (3” for LG Renoir, 3.5” for iPhone), with a 240x400 (WQVGA) resolution standard for a wide screen and support of only 262k colors. It’s kinda strange that Samsung, known for its beautiful displays, doesn’t offer 16 million colors as in iPhone, and 64 times less. Nevertheless, it produces decent images even when watching videos. A nice addition is the brightness sensor, which when activated makes the display usable in sunny days. The videos will not look good, but you’ll still be able to dial a number or read a message. It is slightly less sensitive to the touch than iPhone but we have no complaints. Renoir on the other hand, is a few steps behind regarding pressing buttons and scrolling. 
The Pixon primarily uses touch for its input method, but there are physical SEND and END keys. They are small but protruding and very well distinguished by touch. There’s a small round button between them, which in contrast to OMNIA’s optical mouse can only be pressed. In most cases, it is used to take you a step back. All three have a very good tactile feedback. 
The majority of buttons are located on the rugged sides. On the left we have the Hold (used for locking) and Shortcut keys. There is also a microSD card slot, covered by a lid. The right side houses the only easy to spot side key – the camera trigger. You’ll see the rest of the camera buttons; play, one for switching to different modes, and the digital zoom rocker (also used as a volume rocker of course). The top side houses the charger connector, which surprisingly is not microUSB but Samsung’s proprietary one also used for headphones and data cable. Display The 3.2" display of Samsung M8800 Pixon is capable of showing up to 256K colors and sports WQVGA (240 x 400 pixels) resolution. Picture quality is commendable with very good brightness levels and pretty decent contrast. Sunlight legibility is also steadily improving over recent Samsung handsets. With the M8800, use in broad daylight is no longer the kind of issue it used to be with the Samsung i900 Omnia for example. The touchscreen sensitivity is quite good. The phone is very responsive and provides satisfying haptic feedback. In addition, vibration intensity can be modified to best suit the user taste. The screen can also be calibrated for spot-on touch accuracy.
User interface alive with color. 
User Interface The user interface is an improved version of what we saw in Samsung F480, which we did like. The TouchWiz is lively, colorful and very well behaved. Quick and responsive, and nicely thumbable - it makes the stylus essential for handwriting recognition only. The standby screen of the Pixon offers the typical Samsung layout. The top bar is reserved for standard readings like signal strength, battery status, network connectivity, ringing profile etc. As far as the rest of the display is concerned, it is entirely up to the user to decide what should be there and what not. Furthermore, widgets allow a whole lot wider customization and improve user-friendliness. 
Widgets are basically a very convenient way for customizing your home screen. Some of the widgets are more practical such as the calendar or the world clock, while others are just for fun such as the image gallery or the Fun Club logo. All the widgets are stored on a bar on the left which you can reveal or hide by using the small arrow in the upper left corner. 
You can pick which ones to display, by simply dragging them onto the display and placed where you want. If any is to be removed, all you need to do is drag it back to the bar. You can also use some of the icons straight from the widget bar (such as the calculator). 
Apart from the TouchWiz, the Pixon menu structure isn't greatly different from other Samsung handsets. The only major difference is the added tab at the bottom of the display, which holds three of four keys with varying functionality according to the currently selected menu. There are also great animations used for the transitions and the other actions around the menu (selecting, scrolling). 
The main menu displays as a 4 x 3 grid of icons. Sub-menus appear as lists. The much contested feature of all recent Samsung phones, whereby the last used items are highlighted by default when you open a submenu, is also present here. With this touch-operated handset there is almost no difference what exactly is highlighted by default. Still, on some rare occasions when accessing longer lists this might save you some scrolling. 
A nice novelty in the UI of Samsung M8800 Pixon is the multitasking. The phone allows the Java applications to be minimized and run in background in a way similar to the Sony Ericsson non-smartphones. 
We are very pleased with the speed and responsiveness of the handset. Its whole interface is really snappy with no noticeable lags anywhere. The main menu is accessible from the stand-by display by pressing the right key on the tab at the bottom of the screen. Phonebook The phonebook of Samsung M8800 Pixon can store up to 2000 contacts with multiple fields. Those aren't as many as some other manufacturers can offer but we doubt it anyone will ever need more. The names from either the SIM card or the phone memory can be displayed, or both can appear simultaneously. The contacts can than be ordered by either first or last name. Searching is done by gradual typing of the desired contact's name. 
Quite a number of different information fields are available for each contact. You can store up to 5 numbers, 4 email addresses, URLs and so on. Each contact can also be assigned a specific ringtone (audio or video) and picture, as well as a note. Contacts can be organized into groups, which can then have their own ringtones and pictures. There is also a birthday field, which can be synced to the calendar upon a few taps, which is quite a convenient solution. Contact details or your whole phonebook can be sent via Bluetooth, email or text message. 
The Call Log application keeps track of latest calls. Both the Call key in stand-by and the call log icon from the menu give you access to the application. It has four tabs - dialed numbers, received and missed calls and all combined. Finally, there are also data and call time counters and even a call cost feature can be enabled if you provide information about your subscription plan. File management The Samsung M8800 Pixon file browser is somewhat different from the one found on Samsung F480. It can display the files and folders from the phone memory or the memory card, and even both at the same time. There are folders for different types of files - images, video, sounds, which allow the handset to sort the memory contents. However, you are not forced to follow this structure and may place you files as you wish. There will be no problems handling them. 
The functionality of the file browser is one of the best we have seen among non-smartphones. You can copy or move files - both one by one or in bulk, and you can create and delete new folders (save for the root ones). Files can also be sent via Bluetooth and email, one by one or in bulk. Throughout the whole file manager, you can pick files you would like to lock to prevent accidental deletion. Reading from the memory card is fast enough and won't bother users at all. Listing the thumbnails of pictures stored in the respective folder on the memory card now happens very quickly. Camera This is supposed to be a fun phone, right? Camera, videos, music… these are the key elements of the Pixon. 
In the first aspect the Pixon is a serious contender, breathing down the necks of the leaders. It not only has an 8-megapixel camera but is also equipped with plethora extras, and its interface – identical to the OMNIA’s – is very good as well. Despite being somewhat unpolished and not fitting the rest of the software, it is very convenient to use and should be an example for all other touchscreen cameraphones. It is loaded with options that will play nicely to the high tech junkies: face detection, smile shot, 13 scenes, panorama, macro, white balance, effects and ISO adjustment. Add fast focusing (about 2 second during the day) and the almost immediate picture saving (about 1 second) and you’ll agree that using the phone is a pleasure. In contrast, the INNOV8 requires about 4 seconds to store an image. The Pixon is very fast and we like that but what matters is the image quality. Camera interface The Pixon did great here as well. There was noise present even in the pictures taken in broad daylight, which lowers the detail level. Although we didn’t like the way the images looked in full size, they are still more detailed than the Renoir and INNOV8 ; and unlike the last one all objects are proportionate. Color representation is quite good and in the samples below you can see the realistic colors of the sky in different weather conditions. Macro (close-up) shots turn out really nice. 
Unfortunately, the phone is equipped with a weak flash. The results are decent depending on the distance and the colors are grayish. We are somewhat disappointed that the flash is not as good as the one of the N82, which is a previous generation phone. 
The Photo Browser application located in the main menu helps you view pictures and filter them by file name, folder name, date created, color and person on the photo. The last one is possible because the pictures can be tagged. However, we didn’t like this “gallery” and preferred to use the file browser in the image folder. Once you open a picture, you can slide to the previous/next by running your finger across the screen, and there also is a zooming option. Multimedia Music player
The Pixon is not trying to be the best cameraphone but the best in all aspects. Along with the OMNIA Samsung is trying to take away the iPhone’s crown of king of all multimedia phones. The OMNIA didn’t quite manage to do that, but did the Pixon fair any better? 
Despite that the music player is not that attractive and has no large CoverFlow covers, it is good. It is pleasant to use, and the only thing is that it looks kind of old-school. It did visualize the album art of all songs we uploaded in contrast to many other models. We are happy not only to have such an option but to actually see results. FM Radio
Although it doesn’t support stereo, the loudspeaker sounds very good as both, quality and loudness. It easily fills up a quiet room but it’s more suitable for listening to the news. We know that the headphone sound is more important but unfortunately, there’s no 3.5mm adapter to take the experience to the next level. The set included in the package is like earplugs similar to the Walkman ones. They not only look good but are comfortable to wear and produce a decent sound. Personally, we don’t like that type of earphones but once we plugged in our own (higher class) we got even better results. In addition, there are 7 equalizer presets and SRS WOW effect, which change the experience to a great extent. 
In our touchphone comparison we noted that the video playback in OMNIA wasn’t as good as iPhone’s, but the great advantage the Asian contender had was the multiple codec support. We findthe same in the Pixon, and since WM Mobile is not present, the colors are not limited to 65k. This results in great picture quality with DivX (version 5 and later), XviD files or MP4 with H.264 codec. A 720 pixel wide video played just fine, but the next one we tried (1280 pixels) was not supported (160KBit/s bitrate). Video editor
The OMNIA runs on WM6.1 Professional and that gives the user the ability to install many additional applications. In order to have programs on the Pixon other than the factory uploaded, you need to find them in JAVA variant, because it is not a smartphone. The games you get are trial versions and not very entertaining, so we won’t discuss them. The titles include Brain Challenge, Diamond Twister, Millionaire 3 and PyramidBloxx. The Aphalt and Fifa we’ve seen in INNOV8 are not present here. 
Just like the phones from the BEAT Đ•dition series we have a music recognition feature, similar to Sony Ericsson’s TrackID. A short sample of the tune is record via the radio or the mic and is sent for analysis to the server, which gives you the artist and the song name. Conclusion We really loved the Samsung F480 and we were more than happy to welcome its successor. Now, if you look at it that way, upgrading the Tocco is a serious task but the Pixon seems well up to it. It's true though that quad-band GSM support and accelerometer are the only non-imaging related upgrades. The rest - 8MP camera, high-res video recording, DivX/XviD playback, and TV out - leave no doubt that the Pixon is all about multimedia. And that brings us back to how Samsung handle their cameraphone strategy. Efforts at this point are shared between an 8MP all-in-one and an 8MP touchscreen. Being humbled by the INNOV8 may seem just right for the Pixon but it's interesting to see how it handles pressure from the true - and loaded - competitors like LG Renoir and SE C905. Anyway, the Pixon may be a couple of high-tech goodies short but what's there makes perfect sense. The nice and sharp TouchWiz UI, cool web and music, and high-end imaging sure sell. |
