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What system is installed in the Samsung s8000 phone. Detailed review of the Samsung S8000 Jet mobile phone. Appearance and design features

The performance, multitasking implementation, browser, and standard applications are good, but the inability to use many programs that exist for real smartphones is not encouraging. With a little desire, the I8910 HD smartphone will be many times more convenient, more functional, and you won’t want to exchange its capabilities for a fast simple phone. And how important are all sorts of little things like “intelligent” unlocking or a cubic quick menu against all the advantages of a smartphone?

The only bad thing is that the cost of such phones is significantly lower than the mentioned smartphones. As good as they are, there will be more interest in JET and the like. You can repeat the slogan “Smarter than smartphone” many times, but it will never become true. Some people think that the conscious purchase of smartphones requires only multitasking, plus, perhaps, high-quality applications (a browser, for example), but this is not entirely true. This is a different ideology in the organization of the interface, in general the approach to applications, despite the external similarity.

Samsung S8000 JET It’s quite expensive, 20 thousand rubles at the start. Or not expensive? I don’t know, this is no longer an average level at which the model could be called mass. And if the same S5230 Star is sold in record quantities due to its price, spring appearance, and a balanced set of characteristics, then everything is not quite the same. There are very important features, such as powerful hardware and a super screen, but there are not so many of them to attract a huge number of buyers. JET expects very moderate popularity, albeit higher than the extremely niche S8300, but far from what some ordinary people promise.

The company was able to release a truly significant flagship, which is important primarily from the point of view of testing new technologies. It will be very, very interesting to see a mid-segment model based on the S8000 a little later, it will be a hit, but for now JET only sets a new bar for touchscreen phones from Samsung, plus it is a very good answer to the flagship of its main competitor, LG ARENA, now available to those interested There is now a choice of high-quality multimedia sensors. With devices such as JET, the new PIXON12, Samsung is gradually increasing its presence in the segment, and with the help of the S5230 Star and the ones that follow it, they are already starting a war.

Finally, a few facts. The connection quality is no different from the S8300, it is very good, the device has no problems with communication. The polyphonic speaker is loud, but not of particularly high quality, there is only one, but the vibration alert is very strong, noticeable in the pockets of clothes. The phone went on sale in the Svyaznoy retail network, exclusively until the beginning of August. The cost will change slightly, but a drop of 2-3 thousand rubles over several months is quite predictable.

PS: one of these days you will be able to read a full review of the Samsung M8910 PIXON12, which largely replicates the JET in software and hardware, but has the first 12 MP camera on the market, a wide-angle lens, and a xenon flash. An excellent photo solution, pictures of which can be found at the link:
Other links

: Compact, beautiful and unusually fast Samsung JET opens a new page in the history of the formation of the Samsung communications department. Today, the Korean manufacturer is no longer ready to waste money on trifles, and from this point on, the fate of other vendors becomes increasingly cloudy.

Introduction

Who would have thought that two years ago the situation in the mobile communications market might not be an indicator of the future state of affairs? After all, then everything seemed interesting only when comparing the Big Five phones with a truly revolutionary one, which simply had no competitors. Then the very concept of a phone with touch screen control seemed something fresh and unknown, and the subsequent advances by Samsung and LG in 2007 looked boring and dull. Why was there such a gap? Due to the way companies treated their touch solutions, and how, for example, Samsung did not see an opportunity for a market explosion in those conditions. With the zeal typical of Asians, the company delayed for a long time with solutions that exploit the idea of ​​​​control without mechanical keys, and last year the only significant step was only Witu, much better known in Europe under the name Omnia. But the lion's share of the success of the product based on Windows Mobile was not the market need for such a solution, but a super active advertising company that ruined the promotion of the Duos line.

But what was the reason for the company’s slow actions in this segment? Reluctance to compete with someone directly or the need for new hardware components that simply did not exist then? None of these options can be called correct, especially considering that the company began making touchscreen phones on the old hardware platform, and since last fall they added models with powerful IVA, capable of easily playing 700-megabyte videos in DivX- encoding Samsung was preparing something that even before the New Year seemed like something out of science fiction: more than a dozen models that would bring to the market a powerful symbiosis of the speed of regular phones and the convenience of a touch screen interface. Such a mixture could not help but stir up the gaze of those who were seriously thinking about upgrading their phone to a touchphone. What did Samsung offer in February? A quiet revolution with the widespread introduction of AMOLED screens into its top products, devoid of all the minor sores of TFT matrices while maintaining excellent color rendition. In second place was maintaining a high-quality screen with a beautiful and animated interface, which was accompanied by a good hardware platform and traditionally iconic multimedia capabilities. A much less noticeable step was the fundamental correction of all minor flaws in the software, to which we devoted the lion's share of the non-touch review. But did it all look so good a few months ago? Apparently, the company found this insufficient, and by the height of the summer season, Samsung decided to put a temporary end to all attempts by other manufacturers to get closer to such a foundation.

Isn't the foundation of an ordinary house built from cubes? But what are we talking about, because we are not talking about concrete blocks, but about a mobile device. What do you think was missing to maintain its flagship position? Design, materials, or maybe a monoblock form factor? Judging by what Samsung announced on June 15, there were many more shortcomings, but all of them have already been fixed and are happy to serve us to our advantage today. So, meet: Jet, or super-high-speed, - the apogee of everything that pleased us in the iPhone and attracted us in traditional solutions from other manufacturers.

Appearance

But at first glance, the flagship features are not visible here. Moreover, looking at the pictures of the leaks, one could completely confuse this model with, in which the successful appearance was also used. But it’s one thing to simply take the design of a junior model, but to increase its advantages and make the product unique in appearance - Samsung not only coped with this task perfectly, but also showed other companies the importance of creating emotions, rather than a block of plastic.



As a result, behind the appearance of the Samsung Jet S8000, and hereafter simply S8000, you may not notice that the appearance seems to be an order of magnitude larger than the actual dimensions of the case 108.8 x 53.4 x 12.3 mm. Now add to this the multiple roundings of all the edges of the case, the signature bottom bevel, and you get something that potential S5600 owners could only dream of.





The impressions of working with the S8000 are also commensurate with the pleasant surprise of its compact size. In addition, in this form, the completely glossy plastic design of the case only benefits the device, since the matte plastic coating does not raise any suspicion of expected abrasion, and natural wear and possible dents from falls are practically unnoticeable on the dark surface. But the tight assembly with no play is hard to miss, as is the pleasant weight of 124 grams.

The entire front panel of the Samsung Jet is compactly divided into a flat glass insert with a resistive touch film, as well as a thin plastic frame. On the top edge there is the usual cutout, occupied by a decorative speaker grille, and a VGA camera lens for video calls is also located there. To the left of the camera you can see a decorative blue stripe, which actually hides a light sensor and a second proximity sensor that turns off the screen and touch glass during a call if the device is applied to the ear.





But the most interesting thing is located a centimeter below, and it is this point that distinguishes the S8000 from all its competitors. We are talking about a 3-inch screen with WVGA resolution, or more precisely 480 x 800 pixels. According to dry paper characteristics, the matrix is ​​capable of displaying up to 262,000 color shades, but all this fades after the AMOLED technology of the matrix is ​​exposed to publicity. As in, the picture on the screen has excellent color reproduction with pure white and deep black tones, but in terms of sharpness the matrix is ​​comparable only to TFT matrices in phones and. Of course, like any other organic crystal screen, the Jet matrix has nominal viewing angles of about 180 degrees. Add to this the location of the display close to the touch glass, and the resistive glass itself, sensitive to finger touches and a stylus substitute, also cannot be considered an advantage.





Of course, there is a small drawback, and the AMOLED matrix fades significantly in the sun, which narrows the scope of use of the device in direct sunlight to dialing and reading texts.

There is ample space under the screen, unoccupied by anything other than the lacquered black glass backing. But a little lower, the functional content again takes place on a par with the style, since a single matte plate of telephone keys for receiving / rejecting calls runs from the bottom edge. But between them there was a place for the distinctive sign of the new line, namely the cube, depicted in the form of a hexagonal transparent key with a silver edging, the relief edge on which completes the picture to the projection of the cube.



The side elements on the body do not spoil the overall aesthetics of the Jet, since their location is close to optimal, and the number itself does not exceed a dozen. So, at the bottom there was a place for a microphone hole, in contrast to which there is a hole at the top for a second microphone, which serves as an active noise reduction system during conversations, but not when recording video.



Also on the top end there is a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a cable for connecting to a TV, as well as a convenient flip-up microUSB connector for charging and communication with a PC.



On the left side, the landscape is diluted by a hole in the loop for the strap, which is fixed under the back cover, as well as a large, convenient volume rocker, the clear pressing of which should definitely be called a positive feature.



The right end is not so rich in holes - there are none here at all. But on top there is a tight lock button, and closer to the bottom there is an interesting paired platform consisting of a protruding two-position camera button with clear clicks, as well as a part of the rocker pressed to the surface, where the cube launch key is located.



Since nothing has been forgotten, it’s time to take a look at the back of the case with the stylistic red reflectors arranged in a longitudinal line. A sort of emphasis on the word Jet, which denotes supersonic (of course we are lying) speed of operation. This dilution of the glossy black surface looks great, as do the protruding slots of the polyphonic speaker at the bottom. And on the top edge of the cover there is a cutout for a slightly protruding silver frame of the 5 MP camera module with autofocus, where there is a place not only for the camera, but also for two LEDs, which are a good replacement for the flash.





To remove the cover, you do not need to make any unnecessary movements, except that you will need to hook it to the cutout on the bottom end of the case. After this, the thick plastic will easily bounce up, and the owner will only have to remove the patterned element from the guides at the top end.



Under the cover you can find everything that logically should be in the device, but has not yet been described. To be more precise, this is a “slightly warm” slot for microSDHC memory cards with door locking opposite to the standard, as well as a place for installing a SIM card, the blocker of which is the battery.





The modest space under the back cover is occupied by a non-enchanting lithium-ion battery, whose capacity is 1080 mAh. What does this mean in practice? Two days of work with 30 minutes of calls per day, an hour of watching movies and three hours of listening to music through third-party headphones. Add to this an hour of browsing the World Wide Web via Wi-Fi, as well as half an hour of games, and the energy saving mode will notify you of its intentions exactly after lunch on the second day of use. It’s good that the maximum load when recording video will allow the device to work for 1.5 hours, which is twice the results for the S8300 Ultra Touch.



Other photos of Samsung Jet S8000:













Hardware Features

The international advertising campaign for the Samsung Jet S8000 includes the phrase “smarter than a smartphone,” which quite logically suggests that the company is offering this model as an alternative to supposedly smartphone devices with multitasking and other “interesting features.” Well, since such a contrast does not even come from us, then the most logical step seems to be an attempt to compare the model according to the scheme we use in reviews of S60 solutions. So, what makes the software work in this device? This is no less than a Samsung 6410 computing processor operating at a clock frequency of 800 MHz, which only at first glance has something to load. Do you think this component is used to make video work? You are mistaken, because a dedicated IVA is also used here for working with the camera, supporting video streams with a bitrate of up to 2.5 Mbit/s. Think for a second, is the performance comparable to the first netbook on the Russian market, Asus EeePC 701, sufficient for a mobile phone?

But compute components are only good until they're matched to another key to success: memory speed. Here Samsung did not experiment with mRAM, limiting itself to a DDR RAM module of only 1 GB. This is the second stab in the back of competitors who did not sense the wind from the largest manufacturer of solid-state memory in the world. But the memory in the device is by no means an empty phrase, and we propose to talk about this right now.

Smarter than Smartphone

Do you know what the main feature of the Samsung S8000 is? No, this is not a cubic interface or a powerful processor. Here everything is much simpler, but no less brilliant, and the genius comes from how subtly the official phrase of the advertising campaign must be perceived. So, why do we love smartphones? For third-party software? No. But what? That's right, multitasking. And many smartphone buyers around the world can safely use the stock version of the product without third-party software, rejoicing in the fact that each function is an application and can be minimized rather than closed. Well, for this, of course, you need memory, and a lot of RAM. And what do you think is included in the Samsung Jet S8000? Yes, the running application manager, called by holding down the menu key right anytime, anywhere.


In addition, each running application, and this is how menu shortcuts should now be called, is indicated in the head grid of icons by its own launch indicator, just like in products on the S60. Beauty, and that’s all, considering what you see in the screenshots below.

User interface

Where to begin to describe changes in the user interface, if externally the graphics on the screen of the Samsung Jet S8000 look completely different from those on the same S5600? Let's start with permission. So, in standby mode, on the sharp and colorful Samsung Jet screen, you can find a row of clearly visible icons and indicators at the top, where there is a place for a digital clock. Just below are three thin strips of explanation about which widget screen you are currently on. There are three of them again, but now with their own personal pictures, just like in . The widgets themselves are already well known from detailed descriptions in previous reviews, so all we can do is note the noticeably better animation and the absence of lags and slowdowns when manipulating the filling of the screens.







The submenus and other sections are no longer so interesting, although it wouldn’t hurt to mention the additions and innovations. We'll start with gestures, with which you can unlock the screen by visually sketching a letter or launch an application by tracing the desired letter on the screen with your finger. In addition, you can control not only touches, but also a motion sensor, for learning to work with which there is even a separate game.






Other settings are not so interesting, and the proposed set of features is unlikely to surprise those who are familiar with the personalization of the S5600.



Standard Applications

Working with contacts has not undergone any significant changes, and therefore there is no particular point in describing all these functions again.






But in the call lists, the tab for transferring a number to the black list has been firmly established, which allows you to immediately drop calls from entered numbers, providing peace of mind for those whose number has ended up with unwanted people.



The situation doesn't look any better with reports, although the restraint in optimism is due only to the fact that no changes have occurred, and not to how everything was implemented previously. On the contrary, everything is performed at a decent level, quite sufficient for most users.




By the way, about the keyboard, it can only be activated by forcibly turning the device on its side, and in its implementation it can be called a clone of the one used in Samsung HD. On the other hand, there was a place for E in a pair with E, which can be classified as literal additions, even if at the cost of this, entering a comma and characters other than a period requires going to the symbol table. There is also a virtual input language switch, as well as a small spacebar.



















Communications

Jet S8000 acts as one of the first-born among Samsung phones, for which the presence of both current wireless communication methods is becoming the norm. However, let's start traditionally with the Bluetooth 2.0 module, which supports a dozen different profiles. Among them, it makes sense to highlight A2DP, FTP, EDR and OBEX. As for the data transfer speed, it reaches 130 Kb/s, which is familiar to owners of the company’s phones, and certainly does not look dull compared to its competitors.




Want more speed? Then at your service is the IEEE 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi communication module, which supports both public WLAN access points and secure connections, which you can connect to after comparing the parameters in the private access point profile, which is then saved as a template. After this, all attempts by applications to use the GPRS connection will be automatically transferred to an active connection with the access point, but the joys of wireless networks using the UpNP protocol, unfortunately, are not supported.


But high-speed file transfer and recording is available when connected to a PC, which only requires that you have the included cable at hand. There are three connection options to choose from, of which only communication with a PC in PC Studio mode will require downloading or searching for a disk with an updated, simple program, the distribution kit of which occupies 108 MB. In other cases, we are talking about connecting as a streaming media player or an ordinary removable disk, or rather two:


  • 1.5 GB of available internal memory;

  • microSDHC memory card, up to 32 GB.

On both media, you can write any files without painful waits without any restrictions on volume, the writing speed of which can reach 5 MB per second, and the reading speed is up to 8-10 MB/s. A good and fast result, just right for a fast phone called Jet.


Navigation

The GPS receiver present in the device can hardly be classified as one of those navigation products that look impressive as an effective tool for orientation on the road and on the ground. On the other hand, Samsung is not positioning Navifon network cards as a rebuff to Nokia Maps, which means there is no reason to thoughtfully consider the capabilities of the utility. Although, in a detailed review - a narrative about the use of the Samsung Jet S8000, it will be possible to dwell on this point in a little more detail. Well, now we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the identical description of the navigation software from the S7350 review, and at the same time check the availability of traditional Maps in the Google services section. Anything is better than nothing.










Performance

It would be incorrect to ignore the performance comparison of the Samsung Jet, given the good results of its predecessors and the open optimism that the hardware characteristics inspire. However, there is nothing special to test an 800 MHz processor, since Java runs through its own virtual machine, and the TouchWiz 2 software does not have its own SDK for writing functional applications. However, there is always a way out, but first we suggest that you consider the speed of running tests in the measurement software package from Kishonti LP.

JBenchmark
JBenchmark score: 6595
Text: 945
2D Shapes: 3159
3D Shapes: 666
Fill Rate: 457
Animation: 1368

Jbenchmark 2
Jbenchmark 2 score: 836
Image Manipulation: 425
Text: 449
Sprites: 493
3D Transform: 582
User Interface: 7456

Jbenchmark 3d
HQ: 390
LQ: 416
Triangles ps: 22877
KTexels ps: 2523

Jbenchmark HD
Smooth Triangles: 101449
Textured Triangles: 74186
Fill Rate: 2114 KTexels
Gaming: 315 (10.5 fps)

Photo

The photo viewing application in the Samsung Jet S8000, as expected, has not received any improvements compared to the first implementation in the S8300. Yes, on the one hand, the increased resolution has significantly increased the aesthetic perception of the pictures on the screen, but the clarity of finger touch control and variations in the presentation of pictures still leave room for dreams. However, all this is partially offset by the absence of the device’s traditional delay before scaling the image; fortunately, the uncompressed image is instantly processed and dumped into an impressive amount of RAM.

In addition to viewing and scrolling through pictures manually, you can use a simple slide presentation, consisting of a boring picture change every couple of seconds. There are no settings, effects or background music provided.















Drawing

Less than a year has passed since TouchWiz received a utility for drawing on the screen as a standard add-on. Of course, if we had a capacitive screen in front of us, this addition would be of zero use, but with resistive touch glass everything is quite convenient and fast. Here, the high screen resolution is clearly a plus, and the ability to save pictures in the form of a step-by-step narrative about creating a landscape in SWF will also give you a reason to show off your skills to your friends.




Watch video

The process of watching a video itself has not changed at all compared to the previous version of the interface, so it makes sense to describe dynamic image stretching again only if this is followed by a mention of strictly progressive scrolling with virtual keys. This is how the progress bar turned out to be unclaimed as a finger control element, although it is difficult to call this a significant loss. As an excuse, there is a much more interesting feature, namely support for AVI files with DivX and XViD codecs. The latter looks especially impressive due to the fact that the lion's share of copies of films are found in this format. And independent encoding using XViD does not require the use of a paid converter. In addition, the powerful Samsung Jet processor easily plays videos with a resolution of 720 x 480, and in the case of short clips, it is not a sin to fill up the memory and video with the maximum bitrate. By the way, since we noted the playback of unconverted video, it’s time to remember that the device can easily cope with streams up to 2.5 Mbit/s, and for 5-10 minute clips the ceiling can reach 3 Mbit/s. However, with HD videos the situation is far from clear, since the hardware simply does not support resolutions higher than D1, and it makes no sense to blame the TI component for this. Still, for high-definition videos, there is only Omnia HD so far.











Multimedia

Music

In terms of its functionality, the music player in the Samsung S8000 is not much different from what you could see in the same S5600. Thus, in the main section of the library there is a standard sorting, and the display of albums is made in the spirit of the company’s latest innovations with a matrix of images or a classic list.


In playback mode, there are no options for grouping elements on the screen, and the touch interface is to blame. So, at the top there are standard buttons for going to the library or to the current playlist, and just below there is a small area of ​​the album cover and captions with descriptions. By touching it, you can switch between three possible types of visualization, also available in the settings section. Next to the artist’s designation you can find a button for turning on the software surround sound effect in the headphones, and below it there is a line of three virtual buttons for the equalizer and playback mode settings. Beneath them there is a thin strip of scrolling composition, which you have to aim at with your little finger, or dip your nail in graphite. Just below the navigation list are three convenient player keys, and the Fwd and Bwd keys can be used for progressive scrolling. The familiar bottom line of contextual keys allows you to quickly select a melody as a ringtone, send a song in a message or via Bluetooth, and in the other section there is a tab with meager settings.






It's been a long time since we've had the opportunity to properly listen to Wav files on a phone with TouchWiz without a small artifact sneaking into them. Fortunately, Samsung Jet does not have any problems with this, and therefore the positive description of the player, with a 20% volume reserve sufficient for a noisy metro, will be brightened up by the RMAA 5.5 table of the report. However, let's return to the audio path of the Samsung Jet S8000, which delights the listener with a pleasant development of assertive mids and soft high frequencies, and only in the deep bass area does the dip look clearly more significant than what can be seen on the frequency response graph. In practice, low frequencies are muffled already around 80 Hz, and the most penetrating range of 50-70 Hz is almost twice as quiet as middle bass. However, there are even fewer songs with such frequency coverage than there are headphone models that really clearly cover this part of the spectrum, but in the rest of the range, as we have already noticed, the sound of the S8000 is quite enough to replace the player. By the way, since we remembered about replacement players, it would be useful to answer the question that Jet objectively reproduces music better, and is noticeably inferior in detail to the current standard in the form of the Apple iPhone. Accordingly, in terms of recommended headphones, it is worth highlighting highly sensitive plug-in models in the price range of up to 3,000 rubles. This could be Sennheiser IE4, CX500, AT CK7, etc.

General results

Frequency response unevenness (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB: +0.04, -0.24 Very good
Noise level, dB (A): -88.6 Fine
Dynamic range, dB (A): 88.5 Fine
Harmonic distortion,%: 0.015 Fine
Intermodulation distortion + noise, %: 0.051 Fine
Interpenetration of channels, dB: -85.8 Great
Intermodulation at 10 kHz, %: 0.255 Average

Overall rating: Good

Frequency response


Frequency range Unevenness
20 Hz to 20 kHz, dB-0.93, +0.04
40 Hz to 15 kHz, dB-0.24, +0.04

Noise level


Parameter Left Right
RMS power, dB:-86.1 -86.3
RMS power (A-weighted), dB:-88.6 -88.6
Peak level, dB (FS):-72.5 -72.5
DC offset, %:-0.00 -0.00

Dynamic range


Parameter Left Right
Dynamic range, dB:+86.1 +86.1
Dynamic range (A-weighted), dB:+88.5 +88.6
DC offset, %:-0.00 -0.00

Harmonic distortion + noise (at -3 dB)


Parameter Left Right
THD, %:0.0154 0.0161
THD + noise, %:0.0314 0.0316
SOI + noise (A-weighted), %:0.0314 0.0318

Intermodulation distortion


Parameter Left Right
KII + noise, %:0.0514 0.0519
KII + noise (A-weighted), %:0.0423 0.0424

Interpenetration of stereo channels


Parameter A lion. Left->Right
Penetration at 100 Hz, dB:-85 -83
Penetration at 1 kHz, dB:-85 -85
Penetration at 10 kHz, dB:-69 -66

Intermodulation (variable frequency)


Parameter Left Right
KII + noise at 5 kHz, %:0.1354 0.1348
KII + noise at 10 kHz, %:0.2648 0.2651
KII + noise at 15 kHz, %:0.3664 0.3659

Radio

The capabilities of the radio receiver will clearly appeal to many users who are seriously considering implementing this function. Judge for yourself: in the range from 87.5 to 108 MHz, the phone can store up to 50 saved stations, and in addition there is AF auto-adjustment, RDS text information output, the ability to manually set the required frequency, and also record a signal from the receiver. Unfortunately, examples of recordings from Jet will only be in the August material, while now we will limit ourselves to just a link to recordings of similar quality from Omnia HD. In addition, it is not necessary to record the song being played in order to later find out its name. Especially for these purposes, Shazam ID is integrated into the FM receiver. And further comments on the best music recognition tool in a mobile device are not needed.







Camera

The device uses a 5-megapixel camera module with autofocus optics and a fairly intense LED flash. Despite the monoblock design of the product, this camera module is a copy of what was previously used in the S7350 slider. Although the sensor and lens itself were also seen in the S7220, the differences in characteristics look much more noticeable. The interface for working with the camera is made in the familiar style of a landscape full-screen viewfinder, the widescreen aspect ratio of which is occupied by virtual keys on the left and right edges. At the top are small indicators of the current resolution and focus type, the estimated number of shots for the selected memory array, as well as a battery charge level indicator.

On the right side of the viewfinder there are icons for switching flash modes, setting exposure compensation, and going to the image gallery. The right area of ​​the viewfinder is somewhat more interesting; fortunately, here you can find a switch between the camera, shooting in one of 15 preset scenes, or video recording. There is also a shortcut for setting the shooting mode with a choice of continuous shooting, releasing the shutter from smiles on the screen, creating a panorama, shooting with a frame overlay, or a regular shot. As you understand, the last shortcut takes us to the settings, which are discussed below.











The settings contain almost all the information we are interested in on adjusting the basic parameters. So, the first on the list is choosing an autofocus mode, followed by:


  • setting a timer;

  • changing frame resolution (2560 x 1920, 2560 x 1536, 2048 x 1536, 2048 x 1232, 1600 x 1200, 640 x 480, 400 x 240);

  • adjusting white balance and color effects;

  • change ISO sensitivity (100, 200, 400, 800 units);

  • changing the exposure metering method;

  • enabling digital stabilization;

  • selecting HDR mode;

  • red-eye removal;

  • changing the compression quality in JPEG (excellent, good, not bad, poor);

  • setting contrast, brightness and color saturation on a coarse scale.





















In addition, there is another tab in the settings, where several specific parameters are set, the use of which is unlikely to change relatively often.

The final quality of the images can confidently be called sufficient for an everyday replacement for a point-and-shoot camera or an ultra-compact camera used for reportage scenes. Unfortunately, during testing of the Samsung Jet, the weather was clearly not conducive to the practice of artistic photography, and therefore we had to limit ourselves to only examples of reportage photography. Although such use, and even in cloudy conditions, is it not ideal test conditions for assessing the quality of the camera?



[+] enlarge, 2560x1920, JPEG, 2.0 MB [+] enlarge, 2560x1920, JPEG, 1.9 MB

Among other things, the phone supports video recording at a resolution of up to 720 x 480 pixels at an honest 30 frames per second. There are far fewer video recording settings in the device, but the final result clearly doesn’t set any records.













Like a phone

In terms of communication quality, the Samsung S8000 does not cause any complaints, and no reasons for this were noticed, since the shielding on the plastic rear surface is zero. But the device was clearly designed to compete with many sensor solutions in the upper price segment for a reason, as a result of which we got an excellent conversational speaker with a third of the volume reserve in the room, sufficient to hear the interlocutor in the conditions of the Moscow subway. In addition, the polyphonic speaker is also well implemented, reproducing sounds with a maximum volume slightly above the average level, but without any overload. Doesn't scream, but doesn't wheeze either - this is the best description. Well, if you carry the phone in the pocket of your trousers or jeans, problems will not arise at all, since the vibration motor also penetrates from the outer pocket of your spring windbreaker.

conclusions

In conclusion, we could again praise Samsung for those steps towards expanding its influence in the niche of touchscreen phones, and we could again recall that this company owns the lion's share of the production of the main components of such products - LCD matrices. In this regard, let’s better limit ourselves to slightly less detailed thoughts and try to figure out: is it worth spending 20,000 rubles on the purchase of this model in July, or is it better to look for analogies?

But there are no analogies, unless you take in their quality the LG Arena with modest video playback parameters and a bunch of software limitations, or, which will cost 28,990 rubles, and in terms of characteristics is not very different from the brainchild of Samsung. But what is the result then, and is it really possible that we are now faced with the opportunity to purchase the ideal product? No matter how funny it sounds, this is truly the best solution in its class and the best touchphone of 2009. Already, orders from retail chains for this product are estimated in the millions, and the promotion of the device by the Svyaznoy network until the beginning of August should be taken as direct evidence of the importance of this model. In an era of financial instability, it is becoming increasingly difficult to retain the buyer with standard features and stories about continuity, and right now such a novelty directly arises as an answer to the questions of those who doubt their choice.

So, an excellent product, an adequate price and the authority of the manufacturer - what else is needed to sum up the impressions of the device? Perhaps the only thing missing is measured testing over the course of a month, which is what we will do in July.

P.S. If you did not notice the description of the virtual cube in this review, this does not mean that it did not work in our sample. On the contrary, it is quite well implemented, head and shoulders above the implementation of what is present in the LG S-Class software, and therefore requires a slightly more measured description. And it will appear in the Jet manual, which will be released in August and will provide slightly more detailed answers for those who will spend the summer thinking about buying this definitely iconic model.

© Tikhonov Valery, Test laboratory
Article publication date: June 30, 2009

09.08.2011

How to choose a phone for yourself? A phone that will seduce; a phone whose communication will be pleasant, and whose absence will be noticeable? A phone that will be an assistant, and not just a box with chips?

I'll tell you about my Samsung S8000 phone, a real friend with enormous capabilities. Since my lilac miracle went on sale back in 2009, a lot of reviews and tests of this model have been written over the past two years. Yes, this phone is difficult to compare with the now super popular Samsung Galaxy S II. This is not a full-fledged smartphone, but just a slightly smarter regular handset, but...

But No. 1. I am 14 years old. I earned money for the phone myself. And collecting 160 euros (April 2011) to buy this handset is much easier for me than 450 dollars for an HTC Desire or 690 dollars needed to purchase a Samsung Galaxy S II.

But No. 2. There is nothing easier than buying the most sophisticated phone, which will have almost all the functions successfully implemented in mass-produced phones, but use 30% of these functions. It’s much more interesting to choose a phone that has everything you need without overpaying.

Content:
1. The agony of choice.
2. First acquaintance.
3. I twist and turn, I want to look at it.
4. Work tables. Menu.
5. Personalization, or Everything from one incubator.
6. Player.
7. Camera.
8. Video camera, video player.
9. Wi-Fi.
10. Games.
11. Widgets.
12. Gallery.
13. Alarm clocks.
14. Browser.
15. Calendar, notes, tasks.
16. I also do cross stitch! (Gesture control.)
17. Other miscellaneous things (radio, drawing, etc.).
18. GPS, GoogleMaps, Navifon.
19. How I tried to kill my Samsung S8000.
20. Conclusions and final assessment.

1. The agony of choice

When I had a choice from many phones from different manufacturers, I tried to find:
1. Large touch screen.
2. Wi-Fi module.
3. A camera capable of producing more or less decent photos taken while walking with friends. At the same time, the camera should have autofocus and shoot text well.
4. Unconventional design.
5. The phone is preferably not black.
6. Comfortable keyboard.

I considered the following options:

I remember that Duncan MacLeod is immortal, and a cat has nine lives. I don’t know how many lives my Samsung S8000 has, but definitely at least four.

I assume that a serious adult will not repeat the nonsense listed below. But I'm a natural blonde teenager. And in just three months of using the Samsung S8000, I made several attempts to ruin it. Unsuccessful attempts.

However, judge for yourself:

1. I like to read while lying in the bath. And read from your phone. From my phone with a touch screen. That is, three or four times a week, for about an hour and a half, my phone works in conditions of wild humidity, hot steam, accidental splashes and hastily wiped hands on a towel (I still try to dry my hands before flipping through the pages of a book). Result? There are no glitches, the screen behaves absolutely normally. The fact that I was doing something not quite right became clear only when I decided to replace the memory card immediately after a reading session in the bathroom. It was damp under the back cover of the phone; there were a few droplets of water on the battery. "Creepy!" - I thought, took out the battery and put the phone to dry in the sun. True, two days later I was reading again while lying in the bath. After all, it has been established empirically that it is difficult to kill a phone in this way.

2. Tea. I accidentally spilled three large drops of hot tea on the top of the screen (the one where the speaker and the “alarm clock”, “signal level” and “current profile” icons are). I noticed it after about 10 seconds and took out a napkin the same amount. Nothing happened to the screen. I'm still surprised. The speaker also works great.

3. Vertical racing. As a real blonde, I often do things that are not entirely logical. On City Day we stood on the bridge and watched the fireworks. I filmed flashes in the sky on my phone (yes, this is the same video that no one will ever watch later). I filmed with my arm extended forward. I'm afraid of tickling. The friend knew about this. The result - the hand unclenched, and the phone dived from the bridge (7 meters) into the tall grass. What would you think? Works!

20. Conclusions and final assessment

For the school girl who needs a cute, stylish phone to make school life easier and to have a "take a picture of me in front of this rock" style fun with her friends after school, the phone is perfect.

Obvious advantages:
a) a gorgeous screen;
b) quick thinking;
c) more than good camera performance;
d) gorgeous keyboard;
e) a lot of small nice features and goodies (like visual effects). Moreover, there is no feeling that the manufacturer shoved them into the phone “no matter what”, there is no feeling.

Almost unnoticeable disadvantages:
a) inability to install GoogleTalk;
b) with active use of the phone (calls, Internet, radio for a total of 4-5 hours a day), the battery almost does not survive until the end of the second day. Therefore, you have to charge it every day;
c) information about a missed call cannot be ignored. If you click the "cancel" button on the information message, you will be reminded the next time you miss a call. The solution to the problem is to call back and hang up before connecting;
d) the built-in navigation program Navifon does not know about the existence of Belarus. It's a pity...
d) the player settings are a little crooked. I want more.

Final score: 9 out of 10, and for a schoolchild 10 out of 10. I advise anyone who chooses an inexpensive device for a teenager to pay attention to this one. And then those whose teenagers remain dissatisfied will hit me hard.

Sincerely,
Alexandra (Minsk)

Alexandra

With the release of this device, Samsung made a kind of mini-revolution. Never before have so many different new products been collected in one gadget; never before has a simple telephone been able to surpass many communicators in terms of technology and functionality. In fact, we have before us the ideal companion for a modern city dweller, which has everything you might need, including an excellent media player with support for all popular video formats and convenient tools for web surfing. Interested? Feel free to click on the “Read in full” link!

Before starting the actual description of the Samsung S8000, it’s worth saying a few words about the positioning of the device. Before us is not just a new flagship - no, this is to some extent a demonstration of the company’s capabilities, a test of new solutions, to some extent even a battle test, if you like. This is indirectly confirmed by the fact that for the first time in many years, the new Samsung flagship is coming out in the form factor not of a slider, but of a candy bar. To my taste, the updated TouchWiz platform turned out to be extremely successful, so in the near future we will see several devices in different price segments that will use solutions from the S8000. For example, the already announced photo flagship Samsung Pixon 12 is very close to the S8000 both in software and hardware; by and large, the difference lies only in the camera module used.

Over time, cheaper solutions on this platform will appear. However, right now there are simply no more attractive models in the multimedia phone segment. At the time of writing, no company has announced anything even close to the S8000. The only noteworthy rival is the LG Arena, but this is a product with a secondary design and an obviously worse screen, although overall technologically it is not bad.

Packaging and delivery

As befits a premium product, the Samsung S8000 Jet is well packaged. Under the top bright box there is another one, very high quality, made of embossed cardboard.

Full list of package contents:

1. Mobile phone Samsung S8000 Jet.

2. USB cable.

3. Headset with microphone and volume control.

4. Headphones with noise-isolating tips.

5. Battery.

6. Disc with Samsung New PC Studio program.

7. User guide.

8. Charger.

Specifications

  • Ranges: GPRS/GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS 900/2100.
  • Form factor: keyboardless monoblock.
  • Display: AMOLED, 480x800 pixels, 16 million colors, touchscreen (resistive matrix).
  • Camera: 5 MP, autofocus, LED backlight.
  • Memory: 2 GB + microSDHC cards.
  • Multimedia capabilities: MP3 player, FM receiver, video player (supports MPEG-4, Divx, Xvid, H.264), video editor, integration with YouTube, Find Music service (analogous to Track ID in Sony Ericsson phones).
  • Browser: Samsung Mobile Browser 1.0 (based on WebKit).
  • Wireless technologies: Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
  • Interface connector: microUSB, 3.5 mm headphone output
  • GPS: yes, Google Maps support, Navifon navigation application (3 month license)
  • Dimensions and weight: 108x54x12 mm, 120 grams.

Appearance and design features

Honestly, I don’t know where Samsung gets such designers (grown in greenhouses, maybe?). The Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch was good in appearance, but the S8000, in my opinion, surpasses it due to the harsh charm of minimalism. Simple shapes and strict black color, combined with expensive materials and pleasant weight, give the impression of a well-made thing.

Almost the entire front panel is occupied by the protective glass of the screen. I don’t quite understand how this happens, but it doesn’t get dirty at all, much less than in the S8300 - perhaps Samsung used some kind of oleophobic coating? The back cover is made of expensive glossy plastic with a holographic effect - it looks very good.

The materials give the impression of high quality, but the experience of carrying the device in a pocket has shown that its body is quite easily scratched. So be careful, do not put keys, small change and other hard objects in the same pocket with the Jet.

The build quality does not cause the slightest criticism: the device looks and feels solid, without any backlashes, creaks or other unpleasant effects. The only complaint about the case is that it is very slippery; several times while walking I almost dropped the phone to the ground.

The dimensions of the Samsung S8000 are quite modest (108x54x12 mm). In general, its dimensions are comparable to the Nokia 5800 Express Music, but it is much thinner, making it convenient to carry even in the pockets of skinny jeans.

Controls - the bare minimum. On the front are the receive and hang up buttons, as well as the main menu key, made in the form of a spectacular embossed hexagon. On the left side there is a rocker key that controls the volume. On the right is the camera button, the multimedia menu button, and the lock key. I would like to say a big thank you for this very lock key - it makes life very, very much easier.

The device is equipped with a standard 3.5 mm headphone output, and a regular microUSB is used as an interface connector. Accordingly, all Nokia accessories with this interface are perfect for Samsung devices :)

Screen

The screen is made using AMOLED technology and has a unique (for a regular phone) resolution of 480x800 pixels with a diagonal of 3.1 inches (exactly 8 cm). It so happened that at the same time as the S8000, I came across the i8000 (Omnia II) communicator, which is equipped with an AMOLED screen of the same resolution, but with a larger diagonal (3.7 inches). In terms of brightness, contrast, color reproduction and viewing angles, the screens are completely identical, but due to the smaller diagonal in the S8000, the display looks smoother and less grainy.

So that you can adequately evaluate the quality of AMOLED screens in new Samsung products, we decided to compare them with the Apple iPhone, HTC Touch Diamond and Nokia 5800 Express Music. All three devices have very good screens in themselves, but next to AMOLED they look, to put it mildly, pale.

Just for fun, I decided to compare the screens in the Samsung S8000 and M7600 Beat DJ (the latter uses exactly the same matrix as the S8300 Ultra Touch). To be honest, I myself expected that there would be no difference, but in fact it turned out that the S8000 display is brighter and more contrasty. The difference is small but noticeable.


Compared to Samsung Beat DJ, S8000 has a brighter screen

After getting acquainted with the Samsung S8000, I even began to regret that full-color screens based on OLED technology are still quite rare. I hope that in the future we will see them not only in phones and players, but also in larger devices, such as laptops, monitors, TVs...

Since the device does not have a hardware keyboard or even a joystick, all control is carried out using the touch screen. The S8000 screen combines the advantages of capacitive and resistive technology. Accordingly, you can press the screen not only with your fingers, but also with various inanimate objects - nails, toothpicks, etc. The display is very sensitive and accurate, there are no problems with pressing recognition. To create tactile feedback, VibeZ technology is used - when you touch the screen, the Samsung S8000 vibrates pleasantly. Next to the video calling camera is a so-called “proximity sensor” that disables the touch screen when you hold the phone to your ear.

Battery, operating time

The Samsung S8000 uses a 1080 mAh battery. In the conditions of the Kyiv MTS network, it was enough for 3 days of work with 15 minutes of calls per day and active use of Internet access via Wi-Fi. Also during this time, about 9 hours of music were listened to on the phone and two films with a total duration of 3 hours were watched. In my opinion, we can say that the average user will last about 3 days without recharging; with very active use of multimedia functions, this period can be reduced to 2 days.

Performance

The Samsung S8000 has a processor with a clock frequency of 800 MHz (which processor is not reported, but most likely on the ARM core). Thanks to this, the phone does not “slow down” at all, and the response to user actions is instantaneous. Complex animation effects (for example, in the multimedia menu, which I will write about below) do not cause any difficulties for the device, as well as playing unconverted video. For comparison: in the i8000 communicator, the same multimedia menu in the form of a beautiful cube sometimes begins to slow down severely and to get rid of these brakes it (the communicator, not the menu) has to be rebooted.

To evaluate performance in Java applications, we used Jbenchmark 2 and Jbenchmark 3D; for comparison, we present the results of the Samsung M7600 mobile phone (which, as is known, from a hardware point of view is almost a complete analogue of the Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch).

Update June 20, 2009: After the publication of the review, another copy of the Samsung Jet came into our hands, with the final version of the firmware. It showed completely different results when tested in Jbenchmark 2. So different that we had to abandon the graphs - the data for the M7600 simply would not have been visible on this graph, since the gap between the devices had increased more than three times.

As can be seen from the test data, the Samsung S8000 shows simply outstanding results. It's a pity that most Java applications that require hardware buttons (including games) are completely useless on it.

Menu, interface

So, we have before us another improvement to the TouchWiz interface, already familiar to us from the Samsung S8300 review. This incarnation is good because it supports three “desktops”, each of which can display its own set of necessary widgets. Switching between “desktops” occurs by moving your finger across the screen from right to left or left to right. The same thing is in the main menu: it is divided into three parts, to move between them you just need to swipe the display in the desired direction.

(In parentheses, I note that thanks to the high screen resolution, Samsung was able to achieve simply unprecedented quality of font rendering.)

To dial a number, a virtual numeric keypad appears on the screen. Its use does not cause any difficulties: the buttons are large enough that you can hit them with your finger without any problems.

In addition to the usual alphanumeric keyboard, the S8000 has a QWERTY keyboard. In terms of its “mechanics,” it is very similar to the iPhone: you click on a letter, it “jumps out” at you and is highlighted in a different color. It looks nice and works well too; by the end of the first day with the device I was able to type text with my thumbs at a good speed.

Contacts, calendar and others

The phone book is typical for Samsung devices. You can record up to 5 phone numbers for one name (number types can be set independently), several email addresses, and a short text note. Each contact can be assigned an individual ringtone and picture. In my opinion, the implementation of the phone book in any modern phone is satisfactory, so this feature does not deserve a long description.

Call lists are implemented very similarly to the S8300. Each of the individual lists displays up to 30 calls; the general list includes not only calls, but also other events (for example, text messages). The implementation of this function does not cause any complaints.

Thanks to the large screen size, the calendar is very convenient to use. You can create two types of events - Meeting or Anniversary. For each event, a name, start time, signal type, and a brief description are indicated.

Alarms are implemented in the same way as in the Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch: you can create several alarms, assign each of them a frequency, days of the week and repeat options.

The phone supports synchronization with the Exchange server. As far as I know, this option has never been seen in regular phones before (correct me if I’m wrong).

Samsung S8000 is synchronized with a computer using the New PC Studio program. This program, in my opinion, deserves a separate article, I will only say that it works well and synchronizing contacts with Outlook 2007 occurs without any problems.

WiFi

The phone is equipped with a Wi-Fi b/g wireless module; all common security standards are supported - WEP, WPA, WPA2. Connecting is very simple: go to the Wi-Fi menu item, click Turn Wi-Fi on, then Search. The found networks are beautifully displayed on the screen. Now we poke into the network we like - and the process of creating a connection starts. In most cases, it is enough to fill in only one field - the password.

Browser

With the S8000, Samsung decided to abandon the Access NetFront browser used in previous generation phones. Now we are dealing with Samsung Mobile Browser 1.0, based on the WebKit engine, which makes it similar to the browsers on the iPhone and Android phones.

The first impression of the browser is that it just flies! Indeed, all operations - even page scaling - are performed very quickly. The quality of rendering can be safely put on the same level as Opera Mobile, a recognized leader among mobile browsers.

After the page finishes loading, the browser automatically switches to full-screen mode. In general, its interface is very well thought out, I especially liked the implementation of scaling: you need to touch the screen for a couple of seconds, after which moving your finger up or down will increase or decrease the display scale accordingly.

In general, the browser in the Samsung S8000 is superior to any browser that was previously implemented in a regular phone (in the sense, not in a smartphone or in a communicator). It can be used for comfortable web surfing, and not just in the “urgently search the Internet for the right address” mode.

Orientation sensor

Samsung S8000, like other Samsung touch phones, is equipped with a built-in spatial orientation sensor. Thanks to this sensor, Samsung was able to implement not only automatic change of screen orientation (portrait/landscape), but also two more fun and useful features:

  • Etiquette Pause: When you place your phone face down (for example, during a meeting), it temporarily goes into silent mode.
  • Speaker Call: If you place the Samsung S8000 on the table during a call, the speakerphone mode will automatically turn on.
  • Motion Gate: allows you to open applications by moving the phone left or right while holding down the multimedia menu key (see below). Of course, you can choose which applications will be launched. This is, of course, nothing more than fun, but the technology has great potential.

Unfortunately, our phone's orientation sensor was too sensitive. Sometimes the slightest movement was enough for him to suddenly flip the screen when playing a video. However, exactly the same slight movement in the other direction is enough to restore the status quo.

Communication with a computer

When connected to a computer, the Samsung S8000 can operate in three modes:

  • Samsung PC Studio: In this mode, the device is recognized by the Samsung New PC Studio program, it is possible to synchronize data on the phone with Outlook and transfer media files to the phone’s memory. Attention: in this mode, for some reason, the speed of writing information to the phone's memory drops to 100 KB/s, so data transfer takes a long time.
  • Media player: The phone switches to MTP mode, synchronizing media files with Windows Media Player is possible.
  • Mass storage: The device's built-in memory and microSD card are recognized as removable disks.

It's nice that the phone supports the USB 2.0 High Speed ​​standard. In Mass storage and Media player modes, the writing speed to the phone's memory is about 8 megabytes per second, that is, even large files are copied very quickly.

Multimedia capabilities

Multimedia menu ("cube"). It is called up by a separate key on the right side of the device, next to the camera button. Made in the form of a very beautiful (no joke) three-dimensional cube. At the bottom of the screen there is a series of icons for selecting an application: photo gallery, audio player, video player, radio, games, Internet. Icons are displayed on the faces of the cube in real time (that is, your photos are in the gallery, and the album you listened to last is in the audio player). Despite the visual effects, the animation is simply impeccably fast.

Audio player. The MP3 player in the Samsung S8000 is an improved version of the player found in the S8300. It uses a music library that is built based on the ID3 tags in your files. There is the usual sorting in such cases by album, artist, genre, listening frequency, etc. MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV files are supported.

In horizontal mode, the player interface turns into a close resemblance to the Cover Flow mode in Apple players. Unfortunately, the phone "picks up" album covers (Album Art) only when synchronizing music with Windows Media Player.

As I wrote above, the phone is equipped with a standard 3.5 mm headphone output. Initially, I tried to listen to it with the supplied headphones from Beat DJ (according to available information, the S8000 will be supplied with the same headphones). The sound was, to put it mildly, “not ice”: with swamped bass and inarticulate porridge instead of mid frequencies, but the volume reserve was pleasing to the soul.

Then I started searching at home for headphones suitable for the S8000. The first to come across were the Philips SHE9500 and Creative EP630 in-ear headphones we reviewed earlier (aka Sennheiser CX300). With the first, the sound was very pleasant, but quite quiet, while the second produced a loud sound with a hard middle and overly ringing highs, but again with virtually no bass.

Then I moved on to larger specimens, fishing out the Sennheiser HD215 from my desk drawer. With these brutal "almost monitors" the sound was good in all respects, but only a very special person could wear them in public places.

Finally, the last to come to hand were the “anniversary” Koss Porta Pro. With them the sound turned out to be even better than with the Sennheiser HD215: collected, bassy, ​​with a good volume reserve. In other words, Samsung S8000 and Koss Porta Pro together form a very sweet-sounding couple. I sincerely recommend it.

Video. One of the most interesting features of the Samsung S8000 is the video player that supports MPEG-4, WMV, H.264, Divx and Xvid formats. I slipped the phone files encoded with a variety of codecs, including those downloaded from the Internet (where people stream videos with just about anything) - the device reproduced them without a hitch. That is, everything worked out without compression artifacts, crumbling squares and sound desynchronization. The only file on which the device “shut up” was a two-gigabyte HD rip (720p) of a classic horror film The Thing directed by John Carpenter. However, no one expected that a regular phone would be able to play HD video. I would also like to note the good support of YouTube: when you go to this worthy site and select a video to watch, this video is first completely buffered by the phone and then opened by its “native” video player.

In other words, the Samsung S8000 is not just a great phone, but also the best portable video player available today.

FM tuner. Regular tuner with memory for 99 stations. RDS supported. The reception quality is quite tolerable. In general, there is nothing more to say about him. However, since there is no normal music radio left in Ukraine, few people are probably interested in receivers built into phones either.

Photo Browser. There's not much to say about this app either: it allows you to view photos. Slideshow mode, full-screen viewing and other joys are supported. Here again, the good performance of the phone helps: the transition from one photo to another occurs instantly, without delay.

Java applications. The Samsung S8000 finally has a task manager for Java applications. It is invoked by pressing and holding the hexagonal key below the screen. Unfortunately, many applications and games do not correctly recognize the screen size and draw their window incorrectly (Opera Mini is one of them). In addition, the problem typical for touch phones has not gone away: programs/games that rely on hardware soft keys are simply inconvenient to use. Let's hope that in the future there will be applications and games specifically adapted for the Samsung touch platform.

Camera

The built-in camera is probably the only component of the Samsung S8000 that disappointed me. It's not bad, it's just a completely ordinary 5-megapixel phone camera. These were available on the market a couple of years ago. And if the camera in the S8300 was only slightly simplified compared to the M8800 Pixon and was well worthy of comparison with inexpensive compact cameras, then the S8000 camera in the “table of ranks” is at least a couple of steps lower. It's a pity.

Full-size versions of the images are, as always, available in my gallery on Torba.com.

Samsung S8000 records video with a resolution of up to 720x480 pixels at a refresh rate of 30 frames per second, the video format is MPEG-4. The duration of video recording is limited only by the free space in the phone memory or on the MicroSD card.

The recording quality of the video itself is not bad, at least in good lighting, but the sound in the recorded clips is disappointing: the maximum sampling frequency is 8 kHz. Accordingly, it is impossible to listen to this without tears.

So that you can evaluate the quality of video and sound recording for yourself, we have posted two test videos shot with a Samsung S8000 phone.

  • Video0001.mp4 (12.58 MB) - video recorded in good lighting (shopping center, sunlight).
  • Video0002.mp4 (10.08 MB) - video recorded in poor lighting (opera house, incandescent lamps).

General impressions

The device is characterized by good operating stability: during the entire time of communication with it there were no unpleasant incidents. Thanks to the presence of a separate speaker for the ringing tone (which was absent in the S8300), you are unlikely to miss a call even on a noisy street: at maximum volume, the ringtones literally tear your brain apart. Especially if you like the preset ringtone like me Bug's Song. It’s also difficult to call the vibration alert anything other than “brutal”.

I would also like to note the very high-quality earpiece (the same as in the S8300) and microphone. The sound in the speakers is deep, with rich overtones, the voices of the interlocutors sound very alive. I can hear you perfectly well too.

Bottom line

So that the conclusions don’t turn out to be completely similar to honey and molasses, I’ll start with the disadvantages of the phone. The main disadvantage, in my opinion, is a rather mediocre camera. The second relatively large disadvantage is poor compatibility with existing Java applications. Minor inconveniences include an overly sensitive orientation sensor, slippery plastic housing, finicky use of headphones, and the fact that album covers in the audio player appear only after synchronization with Windows Media Player.

Otherwise, the Samsung S8000 is almost flawless. The list of its undeniable advantages alone risks stretching for several paragraphs, so I will briefly list the main ones: a fantastic high-resolution screen, a well-thought-out interface, Wi-Fi, an excellent browser, a convenient audio player, unprecedented full video support, a powerful battery... In other words, Before us is the best multimedia phone of 2009, which can only compete with LG Arena. It’s surprising that against the backdrop of such masterpieces, some companies are going to release such crafts as Aino.

The phone will go on sale in Ukraine in July, its recommended retail price is 4,600 hryvnia.

Taking into account all of the above, the editors gg decided to award the Samsung S8000 with the “We Recommend” badge.

P.S. I’m happy to discuss the new product here in the comments or on my LiveJournal, but it’s better to write on the forum in the appropriate topic - it’s just more convenient there. Ask questions!