Three fine new camera phones: Samsung Memoir and Omnia, LG Incite

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Three fine new camera phones: Samsung Memoir and Omnia, LG Incite

Mar 28, 2009 News

Mobile phones continue to boast better cameras, as demonstrated by our Ratings of both cell phones and (especially) smart phones (both available to subscribers). These three new arrivals to our labs have cameras that fared impressively in preliminary tests in our labs.

Here are details on those test results, along with other information on the phones, which we continue to test. Prices are from the indicated wireless service carrier, with a two-year contract.

Samsung Memoir, $250, T-Mobile. (Click on the image at right for a closer look.) The best camera we've seen on a phone, whether a regular cell phone—as the Memoir is—or a smart phone. The Memoir's full-featured 8.0-megapixel camera, among the highest resolutions we've seen on a cell phone, produced excellent 8×10 prints, and very good 13×19 prints, in our tests. The camera was also less sluggish in taking shots than other 3- and 5-megapixel camera phones we’ve tested. It also has manual ISO settings up to 1600, allowing you to capture images in low-light conditions (though not without noise). Other camera features include a flash, autofocus, anti-shake control, face, smile and blink detection, and video recording.

The Memoir has an impressive array of other features, too. For example, it can view Office documents such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. That ability is usually the purview of the smart phone, which further confirms the blurring line between cell phone and smart phone.

Samsung Omnia, $100, Verizon.
(Click at image right for a closer look.) A feature-packed smart phone
that boasts a fine, full-featured 4.9-megapixel camera. The camera
produced very good 8×10 photos in our tests.

One of the thinner phones we've tested lately, the Omnia has a relatively large 3.2-inch touch-screen
display with widget bar navigation, and its interface is similar to
Windows, which makes navigation intuitive to PC users. It synchronizes
easily with Microsoft Outlook on a PC. It's also easy to switch between
applications and run multiple programs, and you can create and edit
Office documents.

The Omnia has built-in Wi-Fi for fast Web surfing, though it can't be used to swap data with other devices.

LG Incite, $100, AT&T. LG's first smart phone for the U.S. market, while small, manages to squeeze in a more-than-decent camera—albeit one that's not quite as good as the cameras on the new Samsungs. At 3.1-megapixels, it has fairly-high resolution for a phone and produced good-quality 8×10 prints in our tests.

The Incite has a relatively large 3.0-inch touch-screen display and its interface is similar to Windows, which makes navigation intuitive to PC users.

All three phones are now in testing, and will post soon to our Ratings. — Mike Gikas

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