Samsung Pixon M8800 Review

Look and feel

Chunkiness is certainly not a criticism you can level at the new Samsung Pixon M8800, which can currently lay claim to the title of being the world’s slimmest eight-megapixel touch-screen phone.

And you can believe the hype. This is a truly slimline device and, although it weighs in without much of the bulk of the i8510, it seems to have lost nothing in terms of its photographic prowess.

Ease of use

You can navigate the phone’s menu using the 12 coloured icons which make up the regular screen or via the customisable ‘widget’ interface – also found on the Tocco - which lets you drag and drop applications like Google search and Accu Weather from a dock on the side of the screen.

The widgets menu is well conceived and well executed and gives you a really good feel for the phone’s touch-screen capabilities, which are undeniably impressive. However, while widgets are fun, for most of the functionality we found ourselves using the main menu screen, which is right up there with the iPhone in terms of usability.

Features 

Reeling through the list of camera-related specs, you get: auto focus, a dual power LED flash, advanced shake reduction (ASR), wide dynamic range (WDR), face detection, smile shot, face tagging, geo-tagging, panorama shot, macro mode, an accelerometer, plus the ability to sort photos by face, time and colour.

Further boosting the Pixon’s camera credentials is the handset’s striking 3.2-inch touch-sensitive viewfinder.

Performance  

Fortunately, the Samsung Pixon possesses a very responsive touch-screen and works well whether you are selecting a menu icon, tapping in a number on the virtual keypad or scrolling through a page by swiping the screen. The device does come with a stylus in the box, but we didn’t really bother with it. Text messages take a little longer to write than they do with a mechanised keypad but everything else is a doddle and it helps having the three mechanised keys at the bottom of the phone as a back up, especially the central key, which enables you to return to the previous page.   

Battery

With a talktime of up to 220 minutes and a standby time of up to 290 hrs the Pixon does not dissappoint.