Samsung INNOV8 Preview

Software:

As we’ve mentioned above, like G810, INNOV8 also runs on Symbian S60, made popular by the countless Nokia smartphones. Here, we have the latest version (3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2), seen as well in the top Finnish model N96. Samsung has added its own graphic themes, so you can change the style of the interface, to be similar to the other models of its series. Naturally, this only changes the phone visually and deep within, it remains the typical S60 smartphone, which is not a bad thing at all.   


As we’ve said in other reviews of such phones, here we have an excellent phonebook with multiple fields, and now, with a large picture on an incoming call. Message wise, there are more than enough extras and a very good organizer as well. For quite some time, the web browser has been one of the best. Although it is a few steps behind the leaders (which are touchphones) in user-friendliness, it is still very pleasant, even for daily use.



As a smartphone, everything’s good, but as we’ve mentioned, this is an all-in–one device, so we wonder how does it perform as a cameraphone. At first glance it looks promising and with its 8-megapixels, it easily lines up with the big guys. Although we are not fans of the monochrome type of interface, we like it just fine, and it offers many options as well. The face recognition feature is accompanied with smile and blink recognition, so you can get smiley faces with open eyes on your pictures.


Despite the fact that we never rate phones by their prototypes, we’ll publish a few pictures of this version of INNOV8. They look rather promising and we hope the final results will be even better.



Samsung INNOV8 sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution
* Note that due to codecs support, you may not be able to play the file.

Similar to OMNIA, INNOV8 is also a contender for the title ”powerful personal multimedia player”. Unfortunately, there is DivX, but no XviD support, which limits to a great extent the files supported. The other comment we have is related to the screen, which although relatively large (2.8”) has a standard QVGA resolution. It would have been nice to be able to watch videos in VGA, which lets you see the better quality in the files with high resolution. Anyways, we are not negative about this element and are impatient to receive the final test unit, so we can see how it performs as a video player. Music wise, we have the original Symbian S60 music player, but we are curious about the sound quality.


Overall, INNOV8 doesn’t make us gasp and besides the high camera resolution, there are no other innovations. It still looks as a nice multifunctional phone and if it does all that it’s supposed, according to its specifications properly, it should be one good device.