All-angle comparison of the 8MP phones

Video player:

It’s nice to be able to listen to quality music on your phone, isn’t it? You can kill a lot of time in this way and you can avoid boredom, especially when you’re on the road or you’re just waiting for something. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could watch the new episode of House M.D. or Prison Break that you downloaded yesterday at home...

In order to be able to do that you just need a phone with good codecs support (so that you don’t have to spend a long time converting) and a big display (since you would look rather weird watching through a microscope). In other words, C905 does not compete in this category, since it cannot play DivX/XviD clips (it is even limited only to MPEG4/H.263, which does not perform well), and its 2.4-inch screen is not very suitable. Fortunately, the other competitors have something to show in this respect.

Supported codecs:

Already with the launch of OMNIA, Samsung showed that they know how to build in codecs in their phones. In their top smartphone, however, there was a problem with bad artifacts, but it was possible to install additional programs and even to launch MKV files. In the non-smart Pixon you have no other option but to rely on built-in support of DivX and XviD. Fortunately it is great and we faced almost no problems launching files, even those with a 720 pixels width. However, for 1280 we’ll have to wait for the next generation of multimedia phones.


Renoir also supports both standards and, on the whole, you won't have to convert your clips so that you can watch them on the 3-inch display. Unfortunately some videos just won't start for no visible reason, while the same would run on Pixon. We have encountered this problem with some of the test XviD files.


In INNOV8 the situation is slightly different. According to Samsung, it only supports DivX codec, but in our tests we managed to launch also some XviD clips. In both cases the maximum width was 640 pixels. Fans of the Symbian smartphones now probably tell themselves, "Well, what do I care what can be played with the built-in player, if I can install a suitable program and everything will be super!"... and they’ll be absolutely right. However, in our tests with CorePlayer, 720x480 clips hacked slightly, but were generally watchable. However, in assessing the supported standards we take into consideration what the phone comes with, because not everybody would like to part with 30 U.S. dollars for one additional program.

Renoir	Pixon	INNOV8	C905
4	5	3.5	1

Quality:

As you are already aware, the loading of films, series or a clip is not a problem and for three of the 8-megapixel competitors you won’t have to convert, but what then? In other words, what is the quality of the picture?

Pixon will offer you its characteristic warm colors. It shows everything as if it was filmed on a warm autumn afternoon, which is rather nice and would appeal to most people, but, at the same time, it is far from reality. Apart from that, there are some small artifacts like, for example, the smooth transition of colors (especially if it’s from a light color to black). Anyway, the advantage of the big display is a fact.

The LG product might have some problems launching files, but it offers excellent picture quality. The colors are bluish and, on the whole, they are in the cold-color range, but their shading is good and there’re no artifacts and pixelising. A further advantage is the 3-inch screen, which is good for watching without too much straining your eyes.

INNOV8 has the smallest display, but its 16 million colors should make a difference, shouldn’t they? The correct answer is ‘No’. The clips colors are more real, compared to Pixon, but the shading of colors is not as smooth as in the case with Renoir. We encountered these problems already with OMNIA, when we thought they were due largely to the screen, which does not support more than 65 thousand colors. Unfortunately, these problems persist also with the hi-tech display and now it’s clear that we should look for the reason elsewhere.

Renoir	Pixon	INNOV8	C905
5	4	3	1