back to article It's official: Samsung shows off i8510 8mp cameraphone

Rumours that the South Korean company was going to join the 8mp cameraphone crowd have been circulating for a while, now Samsung has confirmed it's launching the i8510 in the UK in August. Much like the iPhone, the i8510 comes in 8GB and 16GB variants, with 3G and HSDPA as well as Wi-Fi. It also features GPS and a camera …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Want that one!

    Drools....

  2. James Pickett
    Thumb Up

    Advantage

    "The only thing that's missing is a touchscreen"

    That's a bonus, in my book. Who wants to get their new phone all smeary with fingerprints, anyway? I imagine that composing text messages is a tad easier, too...

  3. Thomas

    "Come in iPhone, your time could very well be up"

    Sounds a bit unfair - the many things this phone does better than the iPhone are things for which the iPhone already wasn't the best-in-class. The thing for which the iPhone is best-in-class, web browsing, is likely to be rubbish given that the handset has no touchscreen.

  4. Oli

    Oooooh!

    now that is a thing of desire!

    Was, until reading this, a happy N95 8gb User!

  5. Paul Charters
    Flame

    Just a point...

    It's not MISSING a touch screen...it just doesn't HAVE a touch screen.

    Not all of us want annoying scratchable smudge-covered slow-to-respond touch screens.

    My curiosity is more as to whether Samsung have FINALLY decided to let you set your own sounds on incoming SMS/MMS messages, and eliminated those over-touchy little touch-pad buttons.

    Whatever happened to solid construction with real buttons and a nice clicky feel, and rapid phone response time.

    /end rant

  6. Spearbox
    Heart

    mmmm

    For the first time in some time now, I can drool.

  7. Steve
    Thumb Up

    That's pretty nifty looking

    A standard candy bar size instead of the big brick smartphone form factor.

    This might be the replacement for my SE K850i when it needs replacing.

  8. dervheid

    8Mp - so what?

    Given the woefully s l o w performance of the 3Mp camera on the U600 I was unfortunate enough to own, you can only hope that they've addressed that issue or god only knows what good 8Mp will be, apart from creating horribly bloated file sizes.

    Be better utilising a smaller camera and concentrating on image speed and quality as more megapixels does not automatically mean a better picture!

  9. John Shepherd

    But...

    Does it have copy/paste??

  10. Joe K

    Utterly ridiculous

    Even if you put a 20mp sensor in, the pix would be WORSE than a 3mp.

    They're crippled by lens and CCD size.

    When you hit 8mp, and don't increase the CCD chip size, you get a reduction in pixel size, which thanks to the properties of light is a VERY bad thing and buggers up the pictures in all kinds of ways.

    Thats why paying any extra for 8MP+ in non-SLR cameras is a foolish thing to do, you'll end up with worse quality.

    Shame that this ridiculous marketing-for-morons has now infected the mobile industry.

    Oh and Korea had this years ago: http://mobilementalism.com/2005/11/03/samsung-8-megapixel-count-em-mobile-camera-phone/

  11. Seanie Ryan
    Linux

    8mp .. pointless

    once you go over 5 mp, its useless as most of the picture is filled with noise. the sensor is just not good enough. you have to have an SLR.

    agree with derbheld... better to fix speed.

    <flame> but... its still no iphone... ;-) !!! </flame>

  12. Ash
    Heart

    High megapixels...

    ... does not mean better pictures!

    What about decent optics? Optical zoom? Image stabilisation? ISO and focal length adjustment?

    I know i'm asking a lot from a phone-camera (the right way to arrange these two words!), but if they're selling it on the camera's capabilities, they should focus on those.

    In fact, i'm only whinging because you've not headlined the article "It's official: Samsung shows off Wifi, HSDPA, and GPS enabled 16GB Multimedia Phone (with 8MP Camera)."

    This might, MIGHT replace my E51. It'll have to be something special though.

  13. dervheid

    @ paul charters

    nice to know I wasn't the only person to have that kind of problem with a samsung phone. My Orange U600 WOULD let you change the tones via a profiles setting, but if you changed profile, or turned off the phone, everything went back to default.

    Nothing will ever convince me to have another samsung phone.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Yep, I'll have one..

    Ok so not touch screen.. boo hoo... it would of been nice but:

    I love the rest of it,

    1. it looks nice

    2. does MP3's

    3. Does good pictures

    4. highspeed 3g crap'o'la (nice)

    5. Removable SD card of a finaly respectable 16Gb's :) (no mention if that was top end or if when newer HD cards come out it can take them too).

    6. Most important for a new phone in mho is playing DIVX, Media player and real player :) hurra!

    Now all I have to do is get an obber data contract and set-up my NAS for video streaming :) and TV steaming from the other gadgets shown on the reg latly :)

    -ano

  15. jai

    re: Just a point...

    quote: Not all of us want annoying scratchable smudge-covered slow-to-respond touch screens.

    and neither do us iPhone owners - which is lucky then really that our iPhone screens don't scratch, respond quickly and smudges from your pizza covered fingers don't obscure the display and are easy and quick to rub off anyway on your trousers

  16. Andrew Fenton

    More mpixels = more noise

    As above, 8mpixel in a phone will be worse than 3mpixel in even the cheapest standalone camera (eg 15 quid off ebay).

    The phone might be OK otherwise, although video and web browsing are just not practical on a 2.8" screen.

  17. Paul Stephenson
    Alert

    What about the flash?

    The problem I have with camera phone's recently is the flash. I own a rather nice viewty, bar the inability to take a decent picture on a night out in dark pub's/club's/gig's/<insert other venue here>.

    My k800i took better pictures! Sadly I didn't get on with the keypad on the k850i or I wouldn't be posting this now. :(

  18. Brian Miller

    The speed is due to crappy flash

    A lot of people go out there and buy the cheapest flash cards possible. Little do they realise that this can SEVERELY hamper the features of the phone, like taking photos or in any other way writing,reading or copying from the memory.

    My sister showed me this with her N95. crappy memory makes it REALLY SLOW to write to the memory hence you press the button and wait, and wait for it.......... there we go, nice blurry photo.

    Try getting some decent flash memory that is 3-4 times the speed of the crappy cheap stuff if you want to be able to use you camera.

  19. Simon Langley
    Thumb Down

    MegaPixels ShmegaPixels

    So your terrible fuzzy distorted image will waste even more pixels.

    Phones will never make even half-way decent cameras as long as they remain usably small. I make phone calls (and browse the web etc) on my phone. I have a DSLR for photographs.

    Just the front piece of glass on my usual camera lens is bigger and heavier than my whole phone, never mind the rest of the lens. How could a phone ever compete?

    Phones are for crappy snaps and they always will be.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Samsung Phones

    I own a Samsung phone and wont' purchase this if it also has a proprietary headphone jack (and a crappy $25 pair of headphones). I didn't check on the first one, because why should a headphone jack not be a standard output. Jacks to connect to the computer should also be standardized too. I usually buy newer equipment and hand-me-down the old to family members, but I've stopped because I can't get a decent mp3 player with a guaranteed drag and drop through a usb connector (meaning the company website doesn't expressly state you don't have to use their software and specialized connector and I'm not buying it just to take it home and then return it).

    I do think the 8mp camera will take better pictures than the 1mp does on my current phone.

  21. Darren B

    Apparently it is S60

    (see All About Symbian)

    That will upset so of the Oooooo that's nice people.

  22. Qvaka
    Alert

    Yup, it is S60 alright

    @paul charters

    It being S60, you can use most of the sounds on the device to ringtones, incoming SMS tones etc. And they don't go to default after boot. I suppose you can also use videos for ringtones and such.

    @John Sepherd

    It does have copy/paste. A standard S60 feature. Should work for most text input apps (SMS, MMS, notes, calendar....)

    @Anonymous coward

    I'm guessing the i8510 lets you drag and drop your MP3s to it. I'm using a Nokia N95 8GB, which has older version of S60. I can choose to use it just as a USB stick (either over BT or USB) and just drag'n'drop my music there. The phone will find them when I start playing them. Or alternatively I can use the Nokia PC Suite to do it - which I don't do as PC Suite is not really up to it :-) I'm not sure if Samsung is offering a similar one, but at least the USB stick method works.

    Also looking at the Symbian press release, it would seem that there's 3.5 mm headphone jack available. It says 3.5pi but I'm guessing it's mm? And Bluetooth stereo headsets are good to use as well apparently.

  23. dervheid

    @ memory speed miller

    Can't see your point personally. I used the same card in my U600 and transferred it to the nokia 6500s that I finally got to replace it after 5 shitty samsung handsets. The nokia is way faster than the samsung ever was (about 5 times faster).

  24. Simon Collins

    eh?

    "Samsung quotes up to 510 minutes talk time and up to 310 hours standby."

    So if you're constantly on the phone, the battery lasts another 3 hours? how does that work?

  25. Brian Miller

    @dervheid

    It is likely that the memory controller of the U600 was not the higher capacity higher speed type. If it only supports up to 4 Gb then you know this is the case. The problem with SD cards is that they are based on more than 1 standard.

    You must check thoroughly whats what with them.

    more info @

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#Technical_explanation

    I know wiki crap but still handy info

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @Paul Stephenson

    The k800i 3MP cam is better than the crapy k850i.

    I shoulda just got the K810i

    Disappointed k850i owner.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Simon Collins

    OK.. Read your post again... See what you did there?...

    :)

    By the way, I've used one of these and although it's fairly flashy it's still just a shitty Samsung with a shitty OS and a shitty CMOS sensor. As many others have already said, megapixels ain't the be-all and end-all, especially past the ~5 mark.

    Having said all that, I know of 5 *more* 8megapixel phones coming in the next few months, not one of them a Nokia (prize to anyone who can guess the common nationality of 4 of them).

    When Nokia's new flagship launches in late October (N96) they'll already be behind the times with an overpriced, clunky, chunky phone that only drooling fanbois will love. It doesn't even have what I consider to be the next killer feature, an FM transmitter.

  28. andy rock

    flash

    no xenon flash, unfortunately. other than that, it looks rather nice.

    a pity, really, cos it's fairly standard fare for decent cameraphones.

  29. Martin
    Unhappy

    Has anyone EVER...

    ...used a cameraphone for a screen shot bigger than 1280 x 1024? Or a print bigger than 6x4? No? Then why do you need anything bigger than 2M pixels in a cameraphone?

    Sigh.

    It's all about marketing to morons. "Hey, I've got an 8M camera". "Oh, crap, mine's only 5M - I must replace it immediately."

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