advertisement:
Reviews icon
All-angle comparison of the 8MP phones
All-angle comparison of the 8MP phones
Published on: 25 November, 2008 by PhoneArena Team
Sound quality, battery life and interface speed:
As we mentioned in the beginning, we live busy lives and we’re used to relying on fast food, fast vehicles and on making fast money. In these circumstances you probably won’t be prepared to wait for your phone for too long to carry out commands. Fortunately, you’re not going to have problems with three of the reviewed models. Renoir is the only one with slow menu transitions and slow loading of the gallery and music player. This is not so crucial but anyway it creates the impression of not such a good optimization.
As concerns conversations, all competitors perform reasonably well, the best being the Samsung products, with some criticisms on the muffled sound in the headphone of the Pixon product and the rather sharp voices in the case of INNOV8. Then follows the Renoir with slightly less volume and again a muffled sound and, finally we have ranked the monotonous C905.
If we trust the data provided by the producers (our experience has shown that in most cases they can be trusted), the Sony Ericsson battery product is a champion in the category “Most long-lasting in talk and standby mode” with respectively 9 and 380 hours. Just shortly behind it comes INNOV8 (8.5/310), while Renoir and Pixon show almost equal results (3.66 and about 300 respectively).
Conclusion:
Welcome to the finals of the competition of the four 8-megapixel phones. As we mentioned already in the beginning, these four phones are of rather different types. Let us again point out to their common feature, namely that they are the highest end devices by the respective producers, designed to satisfy all needs of the contemporary user. In actual fact, the table with the grades that you can see below reflects to what extend is the respective model versatile. As to which one of the four would best suit you, this is wholly a matter of personal criteria. Let us summarize the performance of the four phones:
Pixon – This is probably the best multimedia device on the market. Only the ‘almighty’ iPhone can challenge it and then only if you don’t account for the 8-megapixel camera. The Samsung product is slightly lagging behind with regard to the sound and picture quality (when you’re watching videos), but the superb codecs support is very useful. You won’t have to convert your video files long. On the whole, the device is well balanced with extras and the only things it lacks are Wi-Fi and a better browser. We’ve written to Santa Klaus, wishing for a new version including these functions and at least 16GB memory.
Renoir – The other competitor with a touch-sensitive screen and huge multimedia capabilities. It’s the shiniest of all and its camera makes such sharp photos that you can cut your finger on them. Unfortunately, as we mentioned in the review, it creates a feeling of incompleteness. It’s as if LG have been worried that they might lag behind the other Korean giant and were in a hurry to launch this one. The only problems that should be dealt with are the slow menus, the Internet browser, the strange reading of ID3 tags and the incomplete codecs support (some files just won’t start for no obvious reason). If these problems were rectified by a software update, the Renoir would appeal much, much more to us. Unfortunately, LG does not have a reputation of a good post-production-service company.
INNOV8 – To say it in a word – smart. The Symbian operation system entails a number of advantages, like the very good browser, the phonebook and the organizer options. It is also equipped with an impressive hardware – the best camera for outdoor photos, big inbuilt memory (8 or 16GB), 3.5 mm jack and the best GPS. Its weaknesses are the lack of a XviD support and the problems, related to the music player, which shows almost no covers. These are all problems that have to be solved with additional programs. Oh, and we almost forgot... the screen is not touch-sensitive and, on top of it, it’s not an iPhone… that was a joke!
C905 – We could say that its’ nothing new under the sun. However, we could say that of any of the four models in this comparison. It’s clear that nowadays the revolutions in mobile technologies are not done by the main producers, rather but the IT companies and associations of different companies (some of them are, of course, established names on the market). An example of this is iPhone by the Apple and Android platform of the Open Handset Alliance. The „Old Dogs” like Sony Ericsson play it safe and therefore C905 is just a very good non-smart phone with good extras like Wi-Fi, excellent Internet browser and a fully functional GPS. What we didn’t like about it is its incapability to play quality clips. The company would also have to work hard to get back on its leadership position among the cameraphone producers that it enjoyed at the time of creation of this class. At the moment they’re only competitive with their indoors photos, or, to be more precise – with the flash.
LG Renoir Specifications | Review
Samsung Pixon Specifications | Review
Samsung INNOV8 Specifications | Review
Sony Ericsson C905 Specifications | Review
As concerns conversations, all competitors perform reasonably well, the best being the Samsung products, with some criticisms on the muffled sound in the headphone of the Pixon product and the rather sharp voices in the case of INNOV8. Then follows the Renoir with slightly less volume and again a muffled sound and, finally we have ranked the monotonous C905.
If we trust the data provided by the producers (our experience has shown that in most cases they can be trusted), the Sony Ericsson battery product is a champion in the category “Most long-lasting in talk and standby mode” with respectively 9 and 380 hours. Just shortly behind it comes INNOV8 (8.5/310), while Renoir and Pixon show almost equal results (3.66 and about 300 respectively).
Renoir | Pixon | INNOV8 | C905 |
4 | 4.5 | 5 | 4 |
Conclusion:
Welcome to the finals of the competition of the four 8-megapixel phones. As we mentioned already in the beginning, these four phones are of rather different types. Let us again point out to their common feature, namely that they are the highest end devices by the respective producers, designed to satisfy all needs of the contemporary user. In actual fact, the table with the grades that you can see below reflects to what extend is the respective model versatile. As to which one of the four would best suit you, this is wholly a matter of personal criteria. Let us summarize the performance of the four phones:
Renoir – The other competitor with a touch-sensitive screen and huge multimedia capabilities. It’s the shiniest of all and its camera makes such sharp photos that you can cut your finger on them. Unfortunately, as we mentioned in the review, it creates a feeling of incompleteness. It’s as if LG have been worried that they might lag behind the other Korean giant and were in a hurry to launch this one. The only problems that should be dealt with are the slow menus, the Internet browser, the strange reading of ID3 tags and the incomplete codecs support (some files just won’t start for no obvious reason). If these problems were rectified by a software update, the Renoir would appeal much, much more to us. Unfortunately, LG does not have a reputation of a good post-production-service company.
INNOV8 – To say it in a word – smart. The Symbian operation system entails a number of advantages, like the very good browser, the phonebook and the organizer options. It is also equipped with an impressive hardware – the best camera for outdoor photos, big inbuilt memory (8 or 16GB), 3.5 mm jack and the best GPS. Its weaknesses are the lack of a XviD support and the problems, related to the music player, which shows almost no covers. These are all problems that have to be solved with additional programs. Oh, and we almost forgot... the screen is not touch-sensitive and, on top of it, it’s not an iPhone… that was a joke!
C905 – We could say that its’ nothing new under the sun. However, we could say that of any of the four models in this comparison. It’s clear that nowadays the revolutions in mobile technologies are not done by the main producers, rather but the IT companies and associations of different companies (some of them are, of course, established names on the market). An example of this is iPhone by the Apple and Android platform of the Open Handset Alliance. The „Old Dogs” like Sony Ericsson play it safe and therefore C905 is just a very good non-smart phone with good extras like Wi-Fi, excellent Internet browser and a fully functional GPS. What we didn’t like about it is its incapability to play quality clips. The company would also have to work hard to get back on its leadership position among the cameraphone producers that it enjoyed at the time of creation of this class. At the moment they’re only competitive with their indoors photos, or, to be more precise – with the flash.
LG Renoir Specifications | Review
Samsung Pixon Specifications | Review
Samsung INNOV8 Specifications | Review
Sony Ericsson C905 Specifications | Review
Renoir | Pixon | INNOV8 | C905 | ||
| Design | |||||
| Display (Size) | 4 | 5 | 3 | 1 | |
| Display (Quality) | 4 | 3.5 | 4 | 5 | |
| Interface | |||||
| Features and Comfort | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| Music Playback | |||||
| Interface | 1 | 5 | 4.5 | 4.5 | |
| Speaker Quality | 2 | 5 | 4.5 | 3 | |
| Headphones Quality | 4 | 4.5 | 5 | 4 | |
| Video Playback | |||||
| Supported Formats | 4 | 5 | 3.5 | 1 | |
| Quality | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1 | |
| Camera | |||||
| Interface, Features, Speed | 2.5 | 5 | 3 | 3.5 | |
| Indoor (low + medium light) | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | |
| Outdoor | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | |
| Internet | |||||
| High Speed Connectivity | 5 | 3.5 | 5 | 5 | |
| Browser | 3.5 | 3 | 5 | 4.5 | |
| Messaging | |||||
| Comfort (Keys) | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2.5 | |
| GPS, Performance and Misc | |||||
| GPS | 1 | 2 | 5 | 4 | |
| Sound Quality, Battery, Interface speed | 4 | 4.5 | 5 | 4 | |
| Misc (PIM + Phonebook) | 3.5 | 3.5 | 5 | 4 | |
| Conclusion | |||||
| Overall | 55.5 | 68.5 | 69.5 | 59 |
Latest Articles
news icon
Latest Articles
Latest Articles
- Differences between iPhone and BlackBerry owners
- Telus to offer BlackBerry Storm2?
- Peter Chou launches HTC HD2, insults iPhone and calls Microsoft HTC's Strongest Partner
- Dell Mini 3iX visits the Feds, passes the test with AT&T 3G frequencies on board
- Sears offering $50 discount to buy DROID
- Ernie and Bert wave hello as Google puts DROID ad on home page
- HTC Hero takes on DROID Eris in battle for the ages
Home page
News
Reviews
Phones (all)
Carriers (all)
Forum
Phone filter
Compare
User comments
Post comment