Samsung Pixon 12 review

The Samsung Pixon has a 12-megapixel camera – and if that isn't big enough for you, we don't know what is. In short, this device's camera is a beast. It probably still won't beat a dedicated digital camera, but it's still one hell of a function to have on your device.

But that's not all the Pixon 12. There's also a 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen and a whole host of additional mouth-watering features. We were excited about getting this phone in – and we'd be waiting a long time.

Well, now the wait is over. Read on to see what we made of the Pixon 12.

The large 3.1-inch AMOLED touch screen has just call start and stop buttons and a pseudo D-pad which is actually just a menu button beneath it, with loudspeaker and a VGA camera for video calling above it.

The back however features a rather clunky outsized lens which juts out awkwardly. It's nice to see it has a real Xenon flash, still something of a rarity on camphones, plus there's a video light and a strange, raised bump at the bottom covered in leather-look plastic.

The sides are fairly busy with volume rocker, camera button, shutter button (why these couldn't be combined into one button, we don't know), screen lock button and microSD card slot (none supplied, though it can handle up to 8GB) covered by a plastic gromit, as is the micro USB power/headphone slot on top.

It comes with a slip-on case which protects the screen, but surprisingly leaves the protruding lens exposed. Fortunately, there's a tiny little lens cover which snaps closed when the camera's not in use.

The super sharp, bright and clear AMOLED screen is a delight to look at, though we were slightly surprised to discover that it's resistive rather than capacitive, so not as sensitive as it might have been, especially since the Pixon 12 doesn’t come with a stylus.

The latest TouchWiz 2.0 interface is on board, with a clutch of widgets you can drag out of the widgets bar at the side and spread across three different home screens which you access by brushing your thumb across them (the menu apps are also spread across three different screens).

There are plenty to choose from, including Facebook and YouTube, and you can even add little mini versions of your favourite website homepages for quick access too.

The smart unlock feature allows you to choose a letter which you can draw on the screen to unlock the phone, go straight to speed dial or the apps launcher. It worked fine, though to be honest, pressing and holding the unlock button worked just as well.

The 12 megapixel camera is of course the star of the show and first impressions are good. It's up and running in a shade under four seconds, which is more than decent for such a well-specced snapper. Taking a pic takes less than two seconds too, even with autofocus and at maximum 4,000x3,000 pixel resolution so it's great for quick snaps.

The position of the lock key directly opposite the shutter button is a nuisance however, since it's all too easy to press it with your thumb while you're trying to press the shutter button with your finger, resulting in you being locked out when you're in mid-snap.

In camera mode the volume control switches to zoom, which starts to make sense of the 'W' (wide angle) and 'T' (telephoto) marks stamped on it. The shutter button is large and responsive, with two pressure levels for focusing and snapping.

As you might expect, the 12 megapixel camera is packed with features, though few that you won't have seen before. If all the possibilities get a bit much, the Smart Auto setting will allow you to automatically calibrate your settings for each shot, and seemed to do a pretty good job too.

Of the extras, Smile Shot is okay, though you wouldn't want to depend on it. Blink detection is worth having on for group shots though it wasn't always reliable and Beauty mode seemed to be for portraits but didn't make a great deal of difference as far as we could tell.

Pic quality was good overall, though you'd be hard pressed to say that pics were necessarily half as good again as Samsung's 8 megapixel i8910HD, for instance.

The flash is clearly stronger than most, but wasn't terribly subtle either, with a tendency to glare, and we found a little too much light bleeding into many of our outdoor pictures than we would have liked. There's no optical zoom, though the digital zoom isn't too bad, offering up to 4x magnification even at maximum resolution.

There's a feast of post pic editing options allowing you to add effects filters (warp, blurring), adjust brightness, colour and contrast, crop, insert text or pics, or even erase bits of your pics.

Video isn't bad at all with VGA 30fps recording. There's also an additional LED video light since the Xenon flash can't remain switched on and there's a basic video editing suite which allows you cut and paste bits of your mini epics.

Browsing is okay but as is often the case with Samsung, comes with a few odd quirks. The onboard accelerometer switches the resolution to landscape when you turn it on its side and the volume rocker works well as a zoom, as does Samsung's one-finger option, where you press and hold the screen, then brush up or down to zoom in or out.

There's visual history and an RSS reader, but for some reason, accessing a hyperlink requires two presses, which goes against sense and precedent, especially with a resistive screen, which requires a fairly decisive press to access functions in any case. Loading pages seemed uncommonly slow too, even with a Wi-Fi-enabled broadband connection.

Messaging works best in landscape mode with the onscreen QWERTY keyboard, which is nicely laid out and easy to use, with a T9 predictive text option for speed. It would have been handy if '@' had been available on the main keyboard, rather than tucked away in the symbols menu but it's a good effort nonetheless.

Setting up email isn't quite as straightforward as it is with some phones, as you'll need your POP3 and SMTP settings. Otherwise though, it's simple enough.

As a media player the Pixon 12 passes muster mainly due to that marvellous AMOLED screen with its 16 million colours. It's quick and sharp, showing our movie trailers off to good effect - you can view MP4, AVI and even DivX video files.

For music it can handle MP3, WMA and AAC files. Flipping the phone on its side allows you to browse your cover art in a cover flow style. The supplied headphones aren't bad and include a 3.5mm adaptor, which goes some way to make up for the lack of a jack plug on the phone itself.

You could use Bluetooth headphones, but you'll need the wired variety for use as an aerial with the FM radio which has over 20 presets. You can scan for stations by holding down the tuning button and also record and identify music – a neat little option in other words.

The Pixon 12 has A-GPS on board too, backed up with Google Maps, but it was a little disappointing in practise, if only because it always seemed to take ages to log our position, no matter which part of London we happened to be in.

Samsung gives a nod to the growing demand for social networking on mobiles with the Communities section in the menu. This keeps a host of networking apps together, allowing you one-touch access to uploading, including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Photobucket, Friendster and MySpace.

Battery life was disappointing, giving us just over a day of moderate use, which we've more or less got used to with app-hungry smart phones, but not on standard phones like this.

The 12 megapixel moniker may be the new buzz word for camphones but on this evidence there's still a bit of work to do. The camera quality is very good but not stellar, and there are a few usability and quality issues which really should have been ironed out before release. Likewise, the browser, GPS and messaging options aren't up there with the best, though they really should be on a phone that costs as much as this one.