If you’ve been paying attention, the Samsung Memoir might seem like old news now, with word of it first leaking out over 2 months ago. Though essentially undeniable, Samsung has remained mostly mum on the topic until tonight in Barcelona, where it made its official debut. It may not be the first time we’re hearing about it, but as it’ll be the first 8-megapixel camera phone to launch on a US carrier, we can probably expect to hear about it a whole lot more for the next few weeks.
We were able to spend a bit of hands-on time with it at its launch party this evening – read on for our impressions.
What we liked:
- It’s the first TouchWiz enabled Samsung handset I’ve used where the touchscreen feels properly made. Dragging icons around the screen didn’t require a ton of pressure, unlike my experiences with the Omnia.
- The landscape mode camera interface, borrowed from Samsung’s full-fledged standalone cameras, works well. When held in landscape mode, it really feels like you’re holding a point-and-shoot camera.
- Photo uploading widgets can shoot your shots to Flickr, Kodak, Snapfish, and Photobucket.
- In bright lights, the camera quality is quite superb. (Sorry – no photo quality samples yet. Read the next part for more on that.)
What we didn’t:
- As far as we can tell, there’s no e-mail support. That means no e-mailing photos, which is why we weren’t able to e-mail ourselves some photo samples. For many, this might be a deal breaker. We may have just missed the e-mail option, but we spent a good few minutes digging for it.
- We took 3 or 4 low-light shots, and they were all surprisingly blue, blurry, and noisey.
Overall, it seems like a solid piece for a high end feature phone, but its low-light shortcomings will probably keep it from fully dethroning your point and shoot.
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