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.

For the more geeky people, here is a summarized specifications of the Samsung SGH-i550.

Network
- HSDPA (3.6Mbps download and 384kbps upload)
- Quad-band (900, 1800, 1900, 2100 MHz)
- EDGE
- GPRS Class 10

Operating System
- Symbian Series 60

Dimnesion
- 115 x 53 x 13.8 mm
- 109 g

Battery
- Lithium Ion at 1200 mAh
- Standby time up to 450 hours
- Talk time up to 8 hours

Memory
- 150MB internal memory
- Expandable up to 4GB Micro SD

Connectivity
- Bluetooth technology Version 2.0 with EDR, A2DP and AVRCP
- USB 2.0 high speed
- WiFi enabled

Display
- 2.6″ screen
- 262144 color TFT (240 * 320)

Camera
- 3.2 mega pixel
- 9x digital zoom
- Auto Focus
- Flash LED

Video
- Recording time up to 3 hours
- Playback time up to 4.5 hours
- MPEG4, H.263 and Real One format.

Music
- MP3, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC, WMA format supportable
- Background music play

Features
- Organizer
- Quick Office
- Adobe Reader

- Java MIDP 2.0
- EMS / MMS support
- SyncML DS 1.1.2
- OMA DRM v2.0
- FM Radio
- e-Mail (POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, SSL and TLS)
- Instant Messaging
- PC STudio v7.1
- Offline mode
- Hands-free speaker phone
- Voice Memo
- Voice Mail
- Call Logs (10 missed calls, 10 received calls and 20 dialed numbers)
- Speed dial
- Themes

And that is the official specification released by Samsung Mobile.

Looking at the specifications, I would say they are pretty standard and what one would expect from a high end mobile phone these days. With a price tag of RM1499, if the phone doesn’t have these much of features, then it doesn’t fit the price tag. In my opinion, the ones that make them stand out would be the WiFi, 3.2 mega pixel camera, 2.6″ TFT LCD display and last but not least, Symbian Series 60 as its operating system.

Symbian Series 60 is currently the operating system used in most high end (which also spells expensive) mobile phone. The pioneer would be Nokia’s N-series, the earliest series of mobile phones to adopt and implement S60 as their operating system. Although the open source software is owned by all the mobile phone manufacturer, it is Nokia that is holding the biggest stake in the company.

The advantage of using S60 as the operating system is that end users are able to install as many third party applications as they want, making their mobile phone as fun, as efficient, and as powerful as the end users want it to be. Being an open source program, developers around the world are constantly creating SIS applications for Symbian phones with different objectives, functions and purposes.

However, nothing is perfect, so is the S60 operating system. Coming from an end user who used N70 that runs on S60 for the past two years, I can safely say that after a long period of usage and with many applications installed, the system will be slowed down at a significant speed. It is somewhat similar to a normal computer trying to run Windows XP with insufficient memory. In Layman’s term, lag.

Yet, it has been two years and there were many newer versions and patches that have been released to fix this aging problem, I can only hope that the problem is partially solved as I believed there’s no solution to this problem. Why? It’s like saying Microsoft Windows will never have blue screen of death, which you and I know that its impossible.

I always have doubt with Samsung’s mobile phones because of its really lousy operating system. When I found out that Samsung Mobile has finally decided to jump onto the wagon to use S60 as its operating system, I was nothing but pleased and glad. Not only S60 is a powerful operating system, the user friendliness that Nokia’s phone is famous for can also be found on Samsung’s phone now. It pushes Samsung’s phone to be right on par with Nokia’s N-series and it boils down who has the better specifications.

Yes, with the S60, its going to open up many possibilities for the upcoming models and even perhaps, change the future of Samsung mobile. That pretty much summarized the specification of the Samsung SGH-i550 as I shall leave the rest for another post.

The Samsung SGH-i550 series :
The Kick Off
The Outlook

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It was only after two days later when I finally got to sit down and have a closer look at the phone. No thanks to the Sunday’s assignment at A Famosa Golf Resort and assignment due on the following Monday.

This is Samsung SGH-i550.

Samsumg Mobile has targeted the phone for design seekers, efficiency seekers, fun seekers and also price seekers. I only agree with three out of the four, as the recommended retail price of the phone is currently at RM1,599. With such hefty price tag, that’s definitely not a phone for a budget user, if you ask me.

The phone, albeit is for both male and female city dwellers, it is the males who might be interested with the phone due to the its shape and colour. Unlike the usual designs of most Samsung phone, the SGH-i550 doesn’t have the sexy curves or shinny silver coating. Instead, it is generally black in colour with brown on the sides and keypads. It is simple yet has a sophisticated look and at the same time, oozing out charisma and class of its own.

At 53mm wide, 13.8mm thick and 115mm long, the phone is reasonably sized and would fit most palms without much problem. Most importantly, it doesn’t weigh a tonne. In fact, it might be even lighter than my current phone as it is only 109g. Looking at the size of the phone, it is quite impressive that they managed to pack in a 2.6″ TFT display for maximum viewing pleasure.

At the back is the 3.0 mega pixel camera with auto focus feature. There’s a little shinny plate to see your reflection for your own cam-whoring convenience. It has a built in flash, definitely not a Xenon flash, but I assume it should be powerful enough (than a conventional LED light) to light up dim lit areas for picture takings. I shall explore the camera feature at a later time.

On the left side, you have the micro SD slot, which is expandable up to 4GB. For your information, it also has 150MB internal memory. You also have the volume bottom, sligthly above the micro SD slot. The camera shortcut key and the charger / USB port are both on the right hand side of the phone. For those who demands better sound quality for their earphones, you have a 3.5mm jack on the top of the phone, next to the power button as well. That’s definitely a bonus!

A 3G video call mini camera resides on the front panel, right next to the speaker. The keypad, thin rectangular shaped, is very responsive and doesn’t require much force to press. The shape makes text messaging a breeze as you punch away the alphanumeric quickly.

Right in the middle of the keypad / phone is a track ball, emitting a really cool looking blue light, as if its the heart of the phone (like IronMan’s). When it’s charging, it’s red in colour.

Instead of the ever problematic joy stick and the flat surfaced joy pad, Samsumg Mobile has decided to put in track ball for easier navigation and scrolling. Rather than pressing or pushing, all you have to do is glide your fingers across the track ball and your cursor would move accordingly. Like our computer’s mouse, you can set the sensitivity of the track ball.

Outlook wise, I would say its pretty safe. Nothing too funky, nothing too old school, nothing too drastic, nothing too boring, it has struck a balance between all the elements to appeal potential users from all range. Moreover, the fact that I dislike the idea of flipping, twisting, rotating, shaking or whatever-ing the phone just to reach the key pad and other functions, this phone has stood out in terms of design. It looks plain and simple, but for a guy, it is definitely appealing.

The Samsung SGH-i550 series :
The Kick Off

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