The Samsung G800 is a luxurious & sophisticated 3G camera phone which comes with a tactile slide opening system, good quality features & technologies.

After Nokia launched its N95 8GB, Sony Ericsson its K850i and LG its Viewty, it inevitably wouldn’t be long before Samsung joined the 5-megapixel camera phone battle.

The Samsung G800 comes with a large 2.4 Inch colour screen, FM radio, music player & an amazing 5 megapixel camera complete with two flash options

The Samsung G800 target the multimedia consumer who is also into mobile imaging. The Samsung G800 is an ultra thin slider mobile phone and show off with a great design.
The designer Samsung G800 cam phone has a digicam-like metallic design and features a 5 Megapixel digital camera.
The handset is one of Samsung’s top models and has to bring Samsung into the high resolution market for mobile phones. This segment is interesting for the manufacturer, the consumer is willing to pay some extras for mobile image quality

We like:
5-megapixel camera with autofocus; 3x optical zoom and face detection; HSDPA
We don’t like:
Lack of Wi-Fi, xenon flash isn’t as bright as we expected

Key features:
• 5 megapixel auto focus camera with 3x optical zoom and xenon flash
• Large 2.4″ QVGA 256K color display
• EDGE and 3G (with HSDPA)
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP support
• Comfortable keypad
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Stylish design
Main disadvantages:
• Bad display processing
• Weak sunlight legibility
• Very slow memory card reading
• No standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Volume/Zoom key is very hard to press
• Quite chubby

Design Rating:
The G800 is far from ultra thin. It’s about the same size as the Nokia N95 and weighs a not-so-pocket-friendly 129g.
What’s obvious about the G800 is that it’s heavily influenced by camera design. On the back, there’s a simple cover that protects the lens and xenon flash. Once the camera is on, you hold the G800 horizontally — as you would a standalone digital camera — and press the easy-to-use shutter button to take pictures and volume rocker to zoom in and out.
On the phone side of things, Samsung has fortunately avoided putting in any touch-sensitive buttons — the keypad, navigation keys and soft keys are all mechanical. We’re also glad to see that all the keys are large and well laid-out, although some may find the keypad a little tough to press sometimes, depending on what you’re used to.

Screen
The screen on the Samsung G800 is slightly larger than the screen on the Samsung G600 as the screen measures 2.4 Inches in size & comes with a high 240 x 320 pixels screen resolution.

It is capable of showing up to 256K colors, which is just what you would expect from most Samsung mobiles these days.
We were let down by the display quality. Whenever there was a gradient graphics shown on the display (especially on photos), the image suffered severe banding effect. It may be an issue of the software not being final.
The performance in extremely sunlit conditions was also dissatisfying, to say the least. The glossy front panel really reduces legibility and makes it very hard to navigate through the menus unless you know them by heart. Finding a proper angle for looking at the phone, when you are outside on a sunny day, is a truly difficult job in most cases
Interface
The main menu is accessible from the stand-by display through a press on the left soft key or the confirming center of the navigation key. The right soft key is reserved for the phonebook. At the same time, each direction of the navigation key can be assigned a shortcut of your choice from a list of 27 items.
Pressing the camera key activates another shortcut menu with some of the most commonly used features of the phone - telephony, messaging, internet browser and music player.

This shortcut menu also contains an “end all” option for terminating any currently running applications. This can come in handy if you have started an internet browser, music player and message editor at the same time and you don’t want to spend too much time closing them one by one
The stand-by display looks are also quite typical of Samsung feature phones. The top bar shows signal strength, battery status, network connectivity (GPRS, EDGE or 3G) and the currently selected ringing mode. The ringing profile is marked by an icon in the top right corner.
Mobile Tracker
Another security enhancing feature in Samsung G800 is Mobile Tracker (previously known as uTrack). Its purpose is to send tracking messages to pre-defined numbers in case your phone gets stolen and a SIM card other than yours is inserted. The effectiveness of this particular feature is the subject of a longer discussion, which we would rather not go into at this stage. Suffice to say, having it won’t hurt at least

Features Rating:
Combining a 5-megapixel sensor, xenon flash, autofocus, LED focus-assist light, 3x optical (inner) zoom, image stabilisation (digital) and red-eye reduction, it’s impressively close on paper to a standalone digital camera.
It’s not all about the camera, though. There’s a comprehensive music player that supports several files including, MP3, AAC and WMA files, and an FM radio. The handset also includes a Web browser and HSDPA (3.5G), so you can browse the Web at up to speeds of 7.2Mbps (depending on the network). The G800 also supports java games and applications such as Google Maps
Memory :
The phone ships with 160 Mb of onboard memory
The memory card (hot-swappable) is displayed as a separate section, so you can’t access both memory types at a time
The Samsung G800 is equipped with a ultra small card slot with microSD and microSDHC flash memory support; 4GB microSDHC will give you the ultimate storage solution
The G800 also comes with a file manager, enabling you to copy files to/from the memory card. In our test the handset had no problems handling a 2 Gb microSD memory card, whereas a 4 Gb unit remained unidentified. Probably, support for higher-capacity cards will be added with new firmware versions.

FM-radio.
You can store up to 20 radio stations in the memory. Also, you can enjoy auto-tuning, but particular channels cannot have own names attached – they are always shown as the frequency numbers.

Voice recorder.
You can record up to several hours of voice memos with the number of files being unlimited. Basically, limitations on recording duration are set by the user himself . All the files are stored in a separate folder in the memory bank. The recorder performs well during lectures, conferences and presentations – we could even say that it is a partial substitute for a digital tape recorder

RSS Reader.
This is a stand-alone utility for RSS feeds. However, it would make more sense if the RSS Reader was bound up with the web-browser, but this is not the case with the G800. This way, RSS links are not picked up by the browser, or sent directly to the application. You will need to manually submit a channel address in this app to subscribe, or enter a web address and let the application try to find an RSS channel on it.
Obviously with this application Samsung is having a first go at this field, and the truth is, it is not really functional or appealing the way it is in the G800. Similar solutions found in the phone from other makers pack more punch and are easier to manage

Java World.
The handset comes pre-installed with 6 games, of which 2 are fully functional (Bobby Carrot, Time Rider II), and four are demo-versions (limited by time or levels). These demos are quite fetching, these can be Asphalt 2 Urban GT, Midnight Pool, Minigolf, Tetris and so on.
Google. A stand-alone menu item for accessing Google search and GMail. Generally, the same things are available with handsets from other manufacturers, except for a dedicated menu item.

WAP
The handset comes with a wap-browser version 2.0 (NetFront 3.4), where apart from JavaScript support, fonts scaling (three types), Smart-Fit (single-column view), full-screen mode (all controls are hidden), page caching, they have embedded a new feature – on-screen ‘mouse’ pointer. Much like Nokia’s S60-powered handsets and Opera Mini, you can view pages with a tiny navigation window displayed. The browser itself packs a lot of goods under the hood and will be appreciated by most users.

SOS Message
The SOS message feature is also present in Samsung G800. It allows quick sending of emergency messages to pre-defined numbers. Recipient numbers should be preset, as well as the text of your SOS message. To send a SOS message later you should just press the volume rocker 4 times with the keypad locked.
Better than Samsung e900
You can now make the phone ring and vibrate at the same time. This is fantastic as I work in a noisy environment.

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