Samsung Memoir

Is the Samsung Memoir a high-megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera or a full-featured 3G-enabled smartphone? It's both, thanks to the 8-megapixel lens mounted on the back of the device and support for T-Mobile's HSDPA 3G network, which provides fast web downloads and multimedia messaging...

Features

• Full touchscreen phone with 8-megapixel auto focus lens, Xenon flash, and easy access to popular photo sharing sites
• Compatible with T-Mobile's 3G network for fast downloads as well as quick uploads of photo and video to sharing sites
• Assisted GPS for turn-by-turn directions; Bluetooth stereo music streaming; microSD expansion to 16 GB; access to personal e-mail and instant messaging
• Up to 5.5 hours of talk time, up to 300 hours (12.5 days) of standby time
• What's in the Box: handset, battery, charger, USB cable, wired stereo hands-free headset, quick start guide

Reviews

The best reasonably accessible camera phone available

by TECK13 from Birmingham, MI on 2009-12-22
Before I dive into reviewing the Samsung Memoir SGH-929 first some notes regarding my perspective/biases. I am memorized by cameras and have been messing around with them for 40 years on and off. I have been shooting with digital cameras for nine years and they have come a long way in those short years. My "regular" cameras include a prosumer Nikon SLR and a Fuji compact. My previous camera phone was a Samsung FlipShot. In spite of "only" being 3MP I got some awesome shots with it. All this is to say that my critical comments will be primarily focused around the camera. I can see someone NOT into photography getting the Samsung Memoir but for all-around phones there are clearly better choices - starting with the iPhone. My bottom line is similar to others. This is probably the best reasonably accessible camera phone available right now but it does not even match a $75 dedicated compact camera. First off, it does not have an optical zoom. Since the Memoir has 8 MP, under ideal conditions, you can zoom in around 50% and still have a pretty good shot, which is a partial work around to no zoom. Outdoor shots with strong light look surprisingly good. Nice resolution and very accurate colors. Edge to edge sharpness is pretty good too. Focusing is a bit slow but works extremely well. Even in low light situations where a red focusing assist light illuminates. Exposure is good too and the ability to select matrix, center weighted or spot is very useful. Unfortunately if you focus on something (with the shutter button pushed half way) and then recompose the shot, the Memoir WILL hold the focus but the exposure continues to adjust in real time. Bummer that. Indoor pictures are pretty grim. With the flash off, almost all the pictures are dark and the white balance is way off. If there is a light source it tends to be surrounded with purple fringing. And, as others have noted, there is a yellow cast to everything. Activating the Xenon flash gives a little welcome light but actually aggravates the yellow cast. Ah, but there is something that will help the more critical half of this situation, that no one else seems to have noted. Take the camera off auto ISO, with or without flash. Set it on ISO 400. The pictures will be a bit grainy but you do get the shot and the dreadful yellow cast can easily be fixed in post processing. Of course, using ISO 400 also "turbo charges" the light from the flash moving it from an almost useless range of a couple of feet to 6 or 7 feet. In Auto ISO, even in very dimly lit rooms, the camera simply doesn't seem to push past ISO 200, resulting in the dark pictures. The camera is slow. It is faster than my FlipShot but that still leaves it as sad. Push the shutter and a second or two later the picture is taken. Then several painful seconds must pass before another picture can be taken. Sports photography is out; even capturing the dog is a challenge. A quick rant. When, oh when, will the BS marketing MP thing end? My first dedicated digital camera had only 3MP and its pictures walk all over the 8 MP Memoir due to an excellent Carl Zeiss lens and an excellent digital processing engine. Put 6MP max in a cell phone, then it is easier to make it work in work in low light and shoot fast. This year we'll see cell phones with 12 MP. Please. Make the camera better, not the marketing. Back to the Memoir. The layout and controls of the Memoir are superb. It looks and handles like a dedicated camera. As stated before the only important thing missing is an exposure lock button. The screen is large enough and of sufficient quality to see if you got the shot and to share pictures with other people. Nice. The geotagging works well but it is slow to lock. I do wish, when one is reviewing the details of a phone in camera, that it would display the ISO setting of the picture. Videos seem surprisingly good for a phone but I am less critical about video than the photo picture quality. Non-Camera Stuff The phone works better for me than my Flipshot did. The quality of the calls also beats my wife's iPhone but that's not saying much. For strict phone quality, the various Motorola phones I have used were head and shoulders above the rest. I downloaded one game, Asphalt 4, and it is unplayable. Abysmal. A total embarrassment. Dodgy controls, horrible ancient graphics. My 3-year-old FlipShot had far superior driving games available. And T-Mobile's selection of games for the Memoir seems juvenile and poppy. Web stuff is OK but it's no iPhone. The weather widget is cool. Simple pleasures. The keyboard is great and texting is a pleasure. The phone book is robust. The music player is more than serviceable but the proprietary headphone jack flat out sucks. The size of the phone to me is just right. For actual phone conversations I prefer the clamshell design but for photos a larger screen is required. However, the Memoir is not so big that it is uncomfortable to use as a phone and it doesn't look like you are holding a tablet up to the side of your head. I am sure someone else has said this but my POV is that the best camera is the one you have with you. I often carry my compact camera with me, and on most near and far adventures I try to take my SLR. But most of the time the only device on my person is my phone. The Memoir is not the camera phone I would design for myself or other real camera buffs but as far as subsidized camera phones go only the Sony c905a comes close. Nokia makes a better camera phone but it is not subsidized. With patience and some skill shots that will blow away most people when they learn they came from a cell phone are as close as the Samsung Memoir in your pocket.

Awesome!!

by Consumer 007 from Atlanta on 2009-04-21
I've had this phone for a week and a half and every day I've been excited to find cool new features. I knew it would be great, but was really surprised by how far it exceeded my expectations. It's definitely not perfect - there are several things that could be improved - but overall I really love it. Great: - 8MP Camera. - Takes better outdoor pics than my old 5MP digital camera. Seems to like sports cars - those pics always come out awesome! - Nice, clear screen. Zooming in/out works great. - The touchscreen works well, and I haven't even calibrated it yet. - The display rotates based on how you're holding the phone. - Call quality is better than any cell phone I've ever had. - The speakerphone is loud and clear. - GPS works well. - Mobile internet sites load fast and work well. - I love having email access on my phone! - Text messaging works great - far better than my old Samsung flip phone. - The 'www.' and '.com' buttons are cool for web address entry. - Alarm settings are easy to work with. - Overall I love the Touchwiz interface - it's easy and fun to use. The whole phone works well as one integrated package, and is very well organized and designed. - Setting up internet bookmarks is easy. - Porting my number to the new service/phone was easy and fast. - It took nearly an hour of video on a single battery charge, with juice left over for surfing and taking a dozen pics. Ok: - USB file transfer seems faster than Bluetooth, and charges the phone simultaneously - The Samsung software (downloaded from their website) works well to pull images and videos off the phone via USB, and to work with the files on my PC. But why should these be required? Why not let the PC recognize and access it as a native device like it does via Bluetooth? Could be better: - Regular internet sites can fail to load or display, or take a really long time to do both. (That's partly the cellular service.) I'm spending most of my time on sites that have a mobile version for phones. - Picture quality varies depending on lighting. Indoor shots frequently come out yellow and fuzzy. - Sometimes the camera seems to focus on anything but what you're aiming at, so the subject is blurry but the background and foreground is sharp. (I have not tried different settings yet - just pointed and shot.) - The screen could be bigger. Especially since I'm so addicted to it and am using it to surf all the time! - Bluetooth file transfer (of 8MP pics) isn't very fast and uses lots of battery power. - The phone doesn't tell me when it's fully charged while using the wall charger. (It does if it's charging via USB.) - Amazon signed me up for a $19.99 100MB/month data plan that wasn't compatible with the phone. Only the $24.99 unlimited data plans (and higher) seem to work.

Overall Excellent Phone

by M. PARK from Seattle,WA on 2009-03-21
I have to actually add some comment on Colin Grant's review. I had a same problem with pics messaging. I called T-mobile service center and found out that it was a service plan problem. You would have to actually chz to "T-Mobile Smartphone Unlimited Web + 400 Messages" instead of normal G1 web service. Overall, awesome phone. You can't go wrong with 8MP camera.

Nice phone and excellent deal from Amazon

by V. Ong from Chicago, IL on 2009-05-27
Pretty nice phone overall. The camera flash could be improved. It doesn't have enought flash for indoor pics.

The camera is very good.

by PictureGuy from Utah on 2010-03-12
The camera is very good for a cell phone. Check out my site for example pictures www cellphonephoto365 com (stick the dots in yourself, otherwise the address is deleted when I post the review) I am not selling anything it is just a site where I take at least a picture a day with this phone. The internet is poor on this model.

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