A mobile phone with integrated camera is sort of a must thing nowadays and as expected, the Samsung SGH-i550 is equipped with a 3.0 mega pixel camera, auto focusing feature and embedded flash. The camera is definitely up for standard photo taking for every Tom, Dick and Harry out there.

To activate the camera, press the camera shortcut key on the right hand side of the phone for a second or so. It will take another two seconds before the camera is ready to take pictures. Two seconds start up time for a normal digital camera is considered to be extremely slow, but for a camera phone, it is still acceptable.

Before I start to elaborate on what you see on the screen, one should know that the image quality can be set to basic, normal or high, with various resolution options, ranging from 320 x 240 to 1152 x 864 to 2048 x 1536. What caught me by surprise is the light metering option, with the standard matrix, spot and center weighted. Enlighten me, since when light metering is part of a camera phone’s option?

The screen displays camera / video camera, phone / memory card, exit / options, auto focus feature on / off, flash on / off, white balance mode, single / burst mode and scene mode.

Instead of going through and deep into option list every time you want to change a setting, there are shortcut keys conveniently placed and can be activated by pressing the relevant alphanumeric keys. Switching from camera mode to video camera mode and vice versa is as simple as gliding your finger across the track ball. “1″ to activate burst mode, “2″ to activate flash, “3″ is to switch between phone or memory card, “4″ for white balance, “5″ to toggle the auto focus feature, “6″ is for white balance, “*” for help, “0″ for settings and “#” for light metering.

Assuming each flip is 1x zoom, there are 9x zoom for this little gadget. 9x zoom, impressive. However, I am not sure whether is it optical zoom or digital zoom. Although both do the same thing, picture quality differs from each other by a rather huge margin. The first picture is at 0x zoom, followed by a 4x zoom and then a full 9x zoom. There’s one thing that bugs me, the very fake laser sound produced each time I zoom in and zoom out. Its the kind of sound you would imagine when a robot moves, in ascending and descending tone. It is not cool, at all, to me, that is.

It is a camera phone and the auto focus feature is definitely not going to be at god liked speed. True enough, there’s a shutter lag of two seconds or more to achieve fully focused before snapping the picture. You just need to press and let go the camera button and the camera will start to focus and snap the picture.

To view the various example of the pictures taken under different white balance, click on the link. Automatic, flash enabled, sunny, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent. I sure hope I linked the correct pictures to the correct white balance settings as I forgot to label them before I load the pictures into my computer.

The phone also has video taking capability. I have shot two sample videos from two scenes from two different movies. The first one is the confrontation of Jedi Master Yoda and Darth Sidious from Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith and the second one is a battle of Gundam Exia and GN Flag from Mobile Suit Gundam 00.

At its native resolution, the sharpness is at an acceptable range, but once being maximized or boosted, you will be seeing a pixel-ated movies and chunky characters. Sound quality is mediocre, as noises are captured along due to the unfiltered microphone. If there are too much sounds being played at one go, its really noisy and I doubt one can make out what’s being played. That aside, the phone does record conversations very clearly though.

Inside the Samsung SGH-i550, there is a video editing software that came pre-installed which allows you to create a video out of still pictures or edit a video right on the spot. Handy feature but whether is it that useful, its still too early to say.

You can insert transition effect between still pictures movies and cut / remove certain scenes from a recorded movie. Another neat feature in the video editing application is the live dubbing, which means you can add in your own voice at a later / during the editing process.

Well, that’s about the phone and video camera of the phone. There’s no point in going through every single detail as its up to the user to find out, right?

My take on the camera is that, it is decent enough for a petty and simple picture, but definitely not for pictures with lots of moving actions, require fast auto focusing or that you deem precious and really want to keep it for a long time. It is still a camera phone after all. However, for still objects, it should be able to the job without major flaw.

I am using a Canon EOS 40D and there’s no reason for me to use the camera for my shots. The only time I will use it will be the time when I want to send a picture through MMS, making it the least used feature of all my past, current and even future phone.

Now, smile one for the camera, please?

Do take note that some of the photos taken by Sony Ericsson P1i as my Canon EOS 40D couldn’t do macro.

The Samsung SGH-i550 series :
The Kick Off
The Outlook
The Specifications & Symbian Series 60

P/S : Interested in a surveillance camera for your company? Surveillance cameras, pan tilt and zoom cameras, and a surveillance camera system are all good examples of surveillance devices that can help improve security.

An old school full manual Yashica film camera, an Olympus digital camera and a Sony Ericsson K700i phone camera in one picture. They are all cameras, but totally different from each other. Technology, that’s what we called.

I wasn’t fond of any phone ever since I got my N70 as it has all the features I ever wanted and everything was working perfectly (albeit lagging) until my phone got stolen.

I needed a phone, badly and quickly.

Not knowing what to get for myself this time, I turned to other people’s opinions and a number of them recommended the Sony Ericsson P1i. While I am not a Nokia die hard fan, I prefer Nokia due to its user friendliness and high compatibility.

Looking at all the phones and N-series by Nokia, none of them caught my eyes. I decided to just jump right in and make the switch to Sony Ericcson, hoping that it would turn out decent and me not selling it away.

RM1620, with a 1GB Memory Stick Micro (M2). It was slightly more expensive than the price my friend offered me, but it was two days before Chinese New Year and I needed the phone badly.

Weighing at only 124g, the P1i feels rather sturdy, sleek black and silver casing, with black keypads and a little red to distinguish the numbered keypads. On the left hand side, you have the jog dial and cancel button while on the right hand side, there are the shortcut button, camera button and Memory Stick Micro (M2) slot. On the front, you have a mini camera (for video call) and a brightly lit and stunning 240 * 320 pixel with 262,144 colour screen.

Another feature of the P1i is the touchscreen capability. Although it is a touchscreen phone, most of the time, you would find yourself switching between keypads / fingers and the stylus. The touchscreen feature is far from being perfect, considering that Apple iPhone is fully usable by tapping with your fingers only. There is a slot to store the stylus on the top left part of the phone.

Flipping the phone over, you have the looks-very-much-like-a-digital-camera camera side. Equipped with a 3.2 mega pixel and auto focus camera, you can take really decent pictures with the phone. By setting it to macro mode, you can even take macro pictures. There are many options for you to play around with, such as white balance, burst mode, video, special effects and on-the-spot editing, you name it, they have it. In case of dark environment, you have two LED lights to brighten up your subjects to give you a clearer picture. Nonetheless, it is still a camera phone and you should not rely on it to capture precious moments or fast moving objects. As for me? The camera is just for MMS purpose.

A sample shot taken while I was cruising around the city during Chinese New Year. Not too bad, I would say. Not sure about night shots though.

The phone fits nicely into my giant palm but not the keypads.

The keypads is a full QWERTY keyboard and each button has two alphabets on it. It took me a day or two before my fingers got used to it and able to punch the right alphabet. Of course, you have the option to write your text but I reckon you can type five times faster than writing on the screen. However, for Chinese text, its faster to write than type.

It does what a mobile phone supposed to do, make and receive calls, send and receive SMS, calenders, clocks, alarms, notes, games and the basics.

I shall not go into details of those puny stuffs but rather highlight the more important functions of the phone. The most useful feature of P1i got to be the WiFi. With WiFi included, it opens up a whole new world of functions and convenience. It is practically a mini computer where you can check mails, reply emails, read blogs, surf the internet, chat and etc.

With BlueBerry installed, I can read blogs easily on my phone now. In fact, I even tried to blog on my phone before and the post worked just fine. To fully utilize the screen space, you can switch the browser to landscape mode by tapping on the landscape button. Unlike Apple iPhone, it doesn’t auto rotate.

By logging into Ebuddy, I can even log on to my MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger and chat. Wicked! Another feature that I really like is the built in RSS reader. I can now subscribe to the blogs I read all the time and read them on the go, without having to login to my Google Reader. However, there’s no import function and to visit all 108 blogs to subscribe the RSS is going to take really a lot of time. I tried loading Google Reader on BlueBerry, the result wasn’t that good.

It comes with a cradle, that acts not only as a charging station, but also as a file transfer station. Connect all the relevant cables and you can transfer files to and fro your phone and notebook easily and without much troubles and at the same time, getting it charged. Whenever you plug your phone into the cradle, there’s a green light emitting from the bottom of your phone, pretty neat, if you ask me.

Overall, the phone is simply stunning and powerful because you can install any applications you found on the Internet into your phone. For example, Tien Soon installed an application that turned his P1i into a GPS system. Hence, one really need to dig out some really cool programs and incorporate them into his or her P1i to make it even more feature packed.

However, there are also a number of things that I didn’t like about the phone.

1) It takes a great deal just to send and receive a MMS (especially those above 1MB), as most of the time, the connection times out. I never have such problem with my previous Nokia phones.

2) Reception of the phone is not decent enough as I get no / low signal quite often. It doesn’t know which to pick for best network reception, often, I find it alternating between a one bar signal strength 3G network and a full bar signal strength GSM network.

3) While the task manager feature is supposed to ease the user when switching from one application to another, I reckon its not that useful yet. Also, whenever I close an application, it should be closed right away, not running in the background, taking up the memory. In other words, the more applications you open, the slower your phone is. You need to close them ala Windows’ task manager style to gain back the used memory.

4) The overall speed of the phone is on the disappointing side. They should have put in a bigger internal memory or a faster processor.

5) Vibration is not strong enough to notify the user. Come on, I need vibrations, not some tingling sensations!

It is a nice phone to use, but its going to take a wee bit of time to get used to it due to the small keypads and such. While the software speed is not hair pulling yet, I reckon its just a matter of time before it does.

P/S : For those who are in Malacca and wants to buy mobile phone and any accessories, do contact Yeong Kit at 016-6444662 as he always give me a very good deal. You can check out his price by visiting his very simple website at http://mobilespec.com.my/.