Samsung Pixon12 M8910 Review

Camera:

So we've finally come to the part where the Samsung Pixon12 M8910 is probably going to leave its mark. The manufacturer has somehow managed to fit in that 12-megapixel sensor and lens into the phone and has still kept the size of the whole thing quite similar to the original.

From an off or locked position, you can quickly get into the camera application by pressing the dedicated camera button – it allows for catching the perfect moments instantly. It loads up in 3 seconds and we are then greeted to the interface we've seen used on other Samsung TouchWiz phones. There's a good amount of options you can modify to fine tune your picture taking – from shooting and scene modes, resolution, ISO levels, effects, white balance, and image quality. There are some things thrown in that can be considered as a novelty feature like blink detection and smile shots. Even when taking photos at the maximum resolution, the Pixon12 manages to take them in a timely fashion so you can quickly take another one right after. With the flash on, it took a mere 3 seconds before the camera was ready to take another photo.


We predominantly used the camera on automatic setting and compared it to an 8-megapixel Canon PowerShot A590 IS camera.

For the most part, we were impressed with how the Samsung Pixon12 M8910 accurately reproduced colors – boasting more subtle colors in almost every lighting condition than the Canon. We're amazed at how well the Xenon flash aids in making photos look realistic – very rarely did images look too over-exposed and worked great in pitch black condition indoors. Photo quality was on par with what the dedicated Canon camera produced – so images were extremely detailed. Even after taking a picture and then zooming into the image, you can clearly view almost every detail without any loss in clarity. Setting the phone on macro mode will enable just about anyone to take closeup shots that look professional – believe us when we say that every nook and cranny of an object is painstakingly detailed. Overall, we did enjoy at how versatile the Pixon12 proves to be a quick point and shoot camera – It's more than capable of capturing the moment elegantly.




With the bump in specs, as well as the addition of a Xenon flash and Power LED, photos taken on the Pixon12 are definitely good enough to replace your typical standalone point and shoot camera.




The fun doesn't stop with taking images, as video quality more than lived up to our expectations. Sure you can take low quality videos for MMS use, but the Pixon 12 allows for video recording up to 720 x 480 pixels. While it would have been totally cool if it supported HD resolution video capturing,  even at that level, videos came out smooth with no stutter when transitioning from various lighting conditions. They were highly detailed and colors looked rich – we were just blown away at how usable it is. Samsung throws in some other goodies for the wanna be movie maker in you – there's an option for slow motion that records video at a high frame rate. All the while the usual laundry list of video options are available to you as well. Sound from the recorded videos was audible without any background distortion.

Samsung Pixon12 M8910 sample videos at 720x480 pixels resolution - Sample 1, Sample 2



Multimedia:

There's an obvious change in the presentation of the music player that Samsung aimed to modify in order to catch up with the times. At its core, the standard player is found which has on-screen commands to fast forward, rewind, or pause/play a song while displaying the track title, artist, elapsed time, and cover art.  You can opt to turn some nice visualizations as a song is played or fine tune how it sounds with the equalizer settings. When you turn the phone to its side in landscape view, it changes it to a familiar cover flow-esque mode – enabling you to move through album cover arts to play a track. It's a nice fit, but lacks the smooth scrolling found on the iPhone. Audio sounded a little weak with the speaker phone, but you can manually select a specific equalizer option to get the best results. Even though it didn't pack any punch in power, it was still audible and didn't produce too much crackling on the highest volume setting.



After loading up two movie trailers in MPEG4 320 x 240 and H.264 720 x 306 formats, we found them all to run quickly without any hiccups. They were detailed, colors looked rich, and the frame rate was steady during the entire playback. The video player is the standard one we've been accustomed to seeing on more TouchWiz phones. Tilting the Samsung Pixon12 M8910 will automatically play it in landscape view.



If you're going to be using the phone for its media features, you'll need to get yourself a microSD card for storage. It will accept cards up to 16GB in size.