Coming from Samsung , who has traditionally favored oly clamshell designs much to my chagrin, the Pixon M8800 is a pleasant surprise. Sure the fact that this cell phone packs a camera thats likely to be more than what your digi-cam packs doesnt hurt ; but it doesnt get away with this at the cost of being just another Samsung clone either.

With its large touch-screen , the designers at Samsung have finally got into whats hot at the market at the moment. So what else differentiates the cell phone from the countless others ? Well FM Radio with RDS would be my pick of the feature list - since I am just an amateur photographer.

Samsung has however paid a lot of attention to the camer part of the handset thus making sure that any photographer serious about his hobby or profession would not hesitate before choosing the Samsung Pixon. Its got a load of features thats just for the camera part and I think this is definitely one instance of paying for a single gadget and getting two in return.

Samsungs name should be enough to make you confident about its phone features , they do have a load of experience in this arena and with a touchscreen and an interactive / intuitive menu its simply hard to go wrong.

• Quad Band GSM (850/900/1800/1900)/GPRS/EDGE, WCDMA 2100/HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity


• 3.2" 240 x 400 262K color WQVGA TFT display


• 8 megapixel camera with: 16x digital zoom, Dual Power LED Flash, ASR (Advance Shake Reduction), WDR (Wide Dynamic Range), Face Detection, Smile Shot, Face Tagging, Geo-Tagging, Auto Panorama Shot, Photo memo, Accelerometer bases Tilt&Flip Photo Browser, Sorting by Face/Time/Color/Folder)


• Video recording: 720 x 480 px at 30 fps, QVGA at 120 fps, Mpeg4, Divx and Xvid video support (record&play), slow motion video playback


• Virtual 5.1 CH Surround Sound


• FM Radio with RDS


• High Speed USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0, TV-Out


• 200MB of internal memory


• MicroSD memory card slot


• 1000 mAh battery, with 3.5 hrs talk and 290 hrs stand-by time


• Dimensions: 107.9 x 54.6 x 13.8 mm


• Weight: 121gr

DialaPhone thinks that Samsung is going to dominate the camera phone category at this rate and we are inclined to agree.

The only drawback if I may say so is that they have put in a GPS chip to compete but dont mention how its going to be used (photo tagging or navigation)? Though its obvious that at least the navigation part will be there.

All said and done, all Samsung needs to do now is bring out a range of similar handsets at different levels for consumers and then open an App shop allowing apps to be downloaded and run on these beauties. Perhaps Samsung would have had to plan it prior to the release and integrate that in the design of the Pixon. But with Apple, Google and others all jumping onto the bandwagon of Apps it would be a shame if this smart phone were left behind for just that reason.

Slated to cost about 550 Euros as it goes on sale in Europe in November. You can buy it from Phones4U now (keep it bookmarked, they will be the first to offer it when it gets here).