The Samsung M8800 Pixon is a camera phone that's been designed from the ground up to be the best camera phone on the market. Not content with fitting it with a huge 8 megapixel, Samsung have also equipped the Pixon with GPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, DivX support, a fantastic screen, an upgraded version of their TouchWiz touchscreen user interface, and more camera wizzardry than you knew existed.

The Samsung Pixon's competitors
With so many features in the Pixon, you'd expect it to be a bit bulky, but not a bit of it. The pixon is just 13.8mm thin, which compares favourably with the Nokia N96 (18mm) and the Sony Ericsson C905 (18.5mm), both of which will be the Pixon's main competitors.

The Pixon is a touchscreen phone with no stylus or keys except for the usual call connect/disconnect and a cursor button. The phone's front is dominated by a huge 3.2" screen that can display 262,000 colours (16 million would have been better, but hey, you can't have everything!)

Samsung Pixon Camera
The camera is capable of taking impressively high quality movies - 30 fps D1 (720 x 480) video capture - with a 120 fps (QGVA) slow motion video capture option for at-home remakes of the 6 Million Dollar Man - plus Face Detection, Smile Shot, Face Link (face tagging) and Photo memo.

• 8-megapixel camera with Auto focus
• Digital zoom (X16)
• Dual Power LED Flash
• ASR (Advanced Shake Reduction)
• WDR (Wide Dynamic Range)
• Face Detection, Smile Shot, Face Link (face tagging)
• Geo-tagging, Auto Panorama Shot, Photo memo
• Photo Browser (Accelerometer Sensor, Tilt and flip
• Sorting by Face/Time/Color/Folder)

The Dual Power LED Flash is the same type as that used by the N96. It's not quite as powerful as a Xenon flash, but it doesn't drain the battery as much either, and it's quicker to recharge, meaning you can continue taking photos in low light after your initial snap.

Face detection, smile shot and Face Link are innovative features that help you take better pictures of people. Face detection automatically focuses on a person's face; Smile Shot goes one better and focuses on their smile; and Face Link lets you tag a face with the person's name, so you can search through your photos by their face and name.

Samsung Pixon Video camera
You can record full frame video with the Pixon at DVD quality (30fps at 720 x 480), or an incredible 120fps at QVGA picture size, which enables you to take slow motion pictures at speeds four times slower than real life.

The Pixon also supports a wide range of video formats, including MPEG4, WMV, DivX, and XviD, letting you watch videos no matter what format they're encoded in (well, apart from those encoded in formats it doesn't support!)

Unbelievably, the Pixon also comes with 5.1 Surround Sound! Not entirely sure how this works on something the size of a phone, but it certainly sounds impressive.

Samsung Pixon's other features
There’s support for MPEG4, WMV, DivX and XviD video playback and a ‘Fast Shutter’, all of which makes the M8800 a real rival for a standalone camera apart from one detail - instead of a proper optical zoom, the camera only comes with a 16x digital zoom. And, as you know, digital zooms are rubbish compared to optical ones.

Ah right - we almost forgot - it’s a Quad Band GSM (850/900/1800/1900)/GPRS/EDGE phone too, with WCDMA 2100/HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity with a built in FM Radio with RDS.

The front of the keypad-less unit is dominated by a 3.2″ 240 × 400 262K colour WQVGA TFT display, and inside lurks a music player supporting MP3, AAC, e-AAC+, e-AAC+, WMA audio formats.

For your audio pleasure, there’s SRS (Surround Sound System) Virtual 5.1CH, DNSe (Digital Natural Sound engine) with Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 for shuffling files on and off the phone. 

Samsung’s new Pixon M8800 phone camera is scheduled for a France release around the middle of October with Europe and Asia following sometime after. as for pricing, we can only offer a Gaelic shrug.

Samsung M8800 Pixon Technical Specifications

General	Status Coming soon Announced September 2008 Network (2G) GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900 / GSM 850 Network (3G) HSDPA 2100 Form factor Block Antenna type Internal
Size	Weight 121 g (with battery) Dimensions 107 x 54 x 13 mm
Display	Type Graphical Coloured Yes, TFT, 262K colors Size 240 x 400 pixels   - Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
Memory	Numbers in phone 1000 Shared memory 200 MB   - Photocall - microSD (TransFlash), up to 8GB
Ringtones	Polyphonic ringtones Yes Ringtone profiles No   - MP3
Networking	HSDPA speed 7.2 Mbps GPRS Yes, Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps EDGE Yes, Class 10, 236.8 kbps USB Yes, 2.0, microUSB Bluetooth Yes, 2.0 with A2DP WAP Yes Browser Yes, WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML Email client Yes   - Built-in GPS receiver - A-GPS function -
Features	Vibration Yes SMS Send / Receive MMS Send / Receive Camera Builtin, 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, video(WVGA@30fps, QVGA@120fps), flash; secondary videocall camera Java Yes, MIDP 2.0 Games Yes, (changeable) Clock Yes Alarm Yes Calculator Yes Calendar Yes To-do list Yes Voice dialing Yes Voice memo Yes Multiple numbers / contact Yes Handsfree Yes Headset jack Yes FM Radio Yes   - face, smile and blink detection, advanced shake reduction, - Tilt and flip photo browser - DivX/XviD/H.263/H.264/WMV/MP4 player - MP3/eAAC+/WMA/AMR player - SRS (Surround Sound System) Virtual 5.1CH - TV out functionality - Online Widget - Organiz
Standard Battery	Type Li-Ion Amperage 1000 mAh Standby time GSM: 290h Talk time GSM: 3h 40m