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 A great phone with a decent camera Jun 25, 2010
I've had this phone since it basically first came out. For me, having a phone that takes decent pictures outweighs most other features I'd want in a phone.
Pros:
- Takes good pictures (8 MP!) with flash
- Touch screen is responsive (mostly, see cons)
- Speakerphone is loud
- Internet speed is decent (3G)
- Expandable memory up to 8GB with micro SD card
Cons:
- Touch screen on most games is bad (i.e. bowling and brick breaker)
- Some dead zones (due to T Mobile's network)
- Camera DOES have shutter lag but is fine for most of the things I use it for
- Software for transferring images is bad - I'd suggest putting phone in a mode where it's recognized as a drive
- Great battery life (usually lasts 2 days)
- Could be more stylish
- Only 3G (4G would be better)
Overall the phone does its job well and the full digital keyboard is nice. It could be better but until more phone manufactures develop phones with flashes this is one of the better phones you can purchase.
Okay, but not great. May 29, 2010
I got this phone last summer as a replacement for my old phone. The main reason for getting this phone was the camera.
The camera is great for a cell phone camera. Not that that's saying much. The image stablizer does not work at all. Whatever you're taking a picture of has to be absolutely still. Also, when taking pictures the photos only go to the internal memory of the phone, which fills up quickly. Once I take more than 30 pictures or so I have to stop and move all the pictures to my card before I can take more pictures. There is no way to adjust the default for where the pictures are stored. The pictures that I do take are a very good quality though.
The actual phone is great. I've never been dropped from a call from it and the call quality is great. The bluetooth features sync well with both my car stereo and my stereo headphones.
I've never used the GPS feature so I can't rate that.
The Music player I am very unhappy with. Not with the sound quality, which isn't bad. But with the layout of the player. You can't do playlists in anything but alphabetical order. This wreaks havoc with listening to audiobooks. For some reason, it can't play tracks in numerical order either. It goes from Track 1, to 10,11,12 and so on and then starts on track 2 after you reach the end of the teens. There is no way to change the layout of this. Even more aggrivating is when I go to play an album. If a track in an album is on another playlist then it will play that track however many times it appears in a playlist. So playing an album is an exercise in fast-forwarding through 2 or 3 tracks.
The touch screen does not work well at all. This is my first phone with a touch screen and I don't own an Ipod so I don't have much to compare it to. But scrolling down is difficult without clicking on something and texting usually involves a lot of backspacing.
The apps available for this product are minimal.
The camera is very good. Mar 12, 2010
The camera is very good for a cell phone. Check out my site for example pictures www cellphonephoto365 com (stick the dots in yourself, otherwise the address is deleted when I post the review) I am not selling anything it is just a site where I take at least a picture a day with this phone.
The internet is poor on this model.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 The best reasonably accessible camera phone available Dec 22, 2009
Before I dive into reviewing the Samsung Memoir SGH-929 first some notes regarding my perspective/biases. I am memorized by cameras and have been messing around with them for 40 years on and off. I have been shooting with digital cameras for nine years and they have come a long way in those short years. My "regular" cameras include a prosumer Nikon SLR and a Fuji compact. My previous camera phone was a Samsung FlipShot. In spite of "only" being 3MP I got some awesome shots with it.
All this is to say that my critical comments will be primarily focused around the camera. I can see someone NOT into photography getting the Samsung Memoir but for all-around phones there are clearly better choices - starting with the iPhone.
My bottom line is similar to others. This is probably the best reasonably accessible camera phone available right now but it does not even match a $75 dedicated compact camera. First off, it does not have an optical zoom. Since the Memoir has 8 MP, under ideal conditions, you can zoom in around 50% and still have a pretty good shot, which is a partial work around to no zoom.
Outdoor shots with strong light look surprisingly good. Nice resolution and very accurate colors. Edge to edge sharpness is pretty good too. Focusing is a bit slow but works extremely well. Even in low light situations where a red focusing assist light illuminates. Exposure is good too and the ability to select matrix, center weighted or spot is very useful. Unfortunately if you focus on something (with the shutter button pushed half way) and then recompose the shot, the Memoir WILL hold the focus but the exposure continues to adjust in real time. Bummer that.
Indoor pictures are pretty grim. With the flash off, almost all the pictures are dark and the white balance is way off. If there is a light source it tends to be surrounded with purple fringing. And, as others have noted, there is a yellow cast to everything. Activating the Xenon flash gives a little welcome light but actually aggravates the yellow cast. Ah, but there is something that will help the more critical half of this situation, that no one else seems to have noted. Take the camera off auto ISO, with or without flash. Set it on ISO 400. The pictures will be a bit grainy but you do get the shot and the dreadful yellow cast can easily be fixed in post processing. Of course, using ISO 400 also "turbo charges" the light from the flash moving it from an almost useless range of a couple of feet to 6 or 7 feet. In Auto ISO, even in very dimly lit rooms, the camera simply doesn't seem to push past ISO 200, resulting in the dark pictures.
The camera is slow. It is faster than my FlipShot but that still leaves it as sad. Push the shutter and a second or two later the picture is taken. Then several painful seconds must pass before another picture can be taken. Sports photography is out; even capturing the dog is a challenge. A quick rant. When, oh when, will the BS marketing MP thing end? My first dedicated digital camera had only 3MP and its pictures walk all over the 8 MP Memoir due to an excellent Carl Zeiss lens and an excellent digital processing engine. Put 6MP max in a cell phone, then it is easier to make it work in work in low light and shoot fast. This year we'll see cell phones with 12 MP. Please. Make the camera better, not the marketing.
Back to the Memoir. The layout and controls of the Memoir are superb. It looks and handles like a dedicated camera. As stated before the only important thing missing is an exposure lock button. The screen is large enough and of sufficient quality to see if you got the shot and to share pictures with other people. Nice. The geotagging works well but it is slow to lock. I do wish, when one is reviewing the details of a phone in camera, that it would display the ISO setting of the picture.
Videos seem surprisingly good for a phone but I am less critical about video than the photo picture quality.
Non-Camera Stuff
The phone works better for me than my Flipshot did. The quality of the calls also beats my wife's iPhone but that's not saying much. For strict phone quality, the various Motorola phones I have used were head and shoulders above the rest.
I downloaded one game, Asphalt 4, and it is unplayable. Abysmal. A total embarrassment. Dodgy controls, horrible ancient graphics. My 3-year-old FlipShot had far superior driving games available. And T-Mobile's selection of games for the Memoir seems juvenile and poppy.
Web stuff is OK but it's no iPhone. The weather widget is cool. Simple pleasures.
The keyboard is great and texting is a pleasure. The phone book is robust. The music player is more than serviceable but the proprietary headphone jack flat out sucks. The size of the phone to me is just right. For actual phone conversations I prefer the clamshell design but for photos a larger screen is required. However, the Memoir is not so big that it is uncomfortable to use as a phone and it doesn't look like you are holding a tablet up to the side of your head.
I am sure someone else has said this but my POV is that the best camera is the one you have with you. I often carry my compact camera with me, and on most near and far adventures I try to take my SLR. But most of the time the only device on my person is my phone. The Memoir is not the camera phone I would design for myself or other real camera buffs but as far as subsidized camera phones go only the Sony c905a comes close. Nokia makes a better camera phone but it is not subsidized.
With patience and some skill shots that will blow away most people when they learn they came from a cell phone are as close as the Samsung Memoir in your pocket.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
great phone- camera is a blur Dec 18, 2009
The phone is fun and I loved it, but the camera has no image stablizer, the shots need to be still pictures, if your wanting to takes pictures of kids that run (like all kids do) well than they will be blurry pictures, other than that it s a great phone.
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