Shootouts

Sony Ericsson Satio & Samsung Pixon12 - 12-Megapixel Takeover!

By Seow Tein Hee - 30 Oct 2009

Features - Samsung Pixon12

Imaging Wizard

While the Pixon12 might not be using one of the mainstream mobile operating systems such as Windows Mobile or Symbian, Samsung has done a fine job on its own. Following the footsteps of earlier models such as the Samsung Jet, the Pixon12 is incorporated with the Samsung TouchWiz 2.0 user interface. With up to three pages for you to load your widgets onto, the Pixon12 has an edge over the Satio in the usability department.

There's nothing new to take note of with the TouchWiz interface. And, just because nothing has changed, we preferred this over the Satio's slightly limited (i.e. no widgets) user interface.

The only thing that we would advise against is overloading your page with widgets. Know your limits, and categorize your widgets wisely on each page to maximize its usage.

Looking deeper, we checked out some of the imaging features that came with the Pixon12. Just for its Scene selection, you'll get more out of this than the Satio. Additional ones include Indoor, Sunset, Dawn, Fall Color, Firework, Candlelight and Against Light. One of the more useful scene selections is the Against Light function, which resolves backdrop glare to a certain extent.

Under Program mode, you can also select your preferred shooting modes. Smile Shot (similar to the Satio's Smile Detection) and Panorama are part of the standard modes, and there's also Beauty Shot, a feature that's often seen in point-and-shoot digital cameras to soften the skin tones.

Shooting modes are aplenty on the Pixon12, with interesting ones such as Beauty Shot, and a Vintage mode that's creates a pinhole effect for your images.

Shooting modes are aplenty on the Pixon12, with interesting ones such as Beauty Shot, and a Vintage mode that's creates a pinhole effect for your images.

While the Satio adopts a hardware button to view your shots, the Pixon12 uses the touch interface with a play icon to access the image gallery. And, instead of a touch focus, you get AF tracking by clicking and holding onto a specific area. Note that the touch AF tracking on the Pixon12 is only applicable with the Smart Auto or Normal shooting mode. And in our various attempts, tracking accuracy is much lower than what you would get with a compact camera.

While AF tracking is a great way to keep your subject in focus, it's a moot point if the tracking isn't able to keep up with the movement.

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