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Samsung INNOV8 - A Pictorial Review

By Seow Tein Hee - 8 Oct 2008

Design

Hardware Delight

The INNOV8's form factor won't surprise many, keeping to the slider model that's quite popular amongst consumers recently. On the surface, the INNOV8 comes with a 2.8-inch TFT LCD screen, with a resolution of 240 x 320 and 16M colors. Focusing just below the screen, we have the standard softkey buttons, Call and End buttons and the Menu and Gallery keys. What got us quite interested though, was the five-way navigation pad at the centre, which doubles up as an optical mouse too.

The INNOV8 comes with a 2.8-inch QVGA screen with resolutions of 240 x 320 and 16M colors, similar to other devices of its class such as the Nokia N96.

Previously, we applauded Samsung for the addition of the optical mouse for its earlier Windows Mobile devices, the Samsung SGH-i780 and the Samsung SGH-i900 or more commonly known as the Samsung Omnia. Imagine holding the device in both hands, with the right finger navigating the cursor via the optical mouse and the left finger clicking on the selected application icon. This was an example of how both the optical mouse and the touch screen interface worked seamlessly and in tandem with one another.

However, on the Symbian S60 platform, the situation's slightly different. With the optical mouse active, moving left, right, up or down as you would with the normal five-way navigation pad would be akin to swiping the optical mouse in the appropriate direction, Herein lies the issue, for when we tried to hit the enter button, there were times when our fingers would swipe the optical mouse just before the device registers the enter action, and thus it actually moves away from the intended icon and enter a different application altogether.

While the optical mouse was a good move on both the i780 and the Omnia, it wasn't beneficial to the non-touchscreen INNOV8 which made navigation much harder than it should.

Sliding the device up, there's the all familiar numeric keypad, with two other customizable shortcut buttons flanking the Clear button at the top of the numeric keypad. At first glance, you might have noticed that the keypad is absolutely flat, and with that, it might seem as though text messaging on the INNOV8 would be compromised. The truth, however, is far from that. We were pleasantly surprised at the speed and accuracy at which we were able to type out a full sentence, which was almost on par with the Nokia N95 8GB that gave us one of the fastest text messaging speed on a slider Symbian S60 phone to date.

The INNOV8's keypad may look deceptively flat and hard to press, but we actually found it very easy to type on it fast and furious, probably due to the well-spaced keypad and its good tactile feedback.

 both keypads leave ample space on the borders such that you won't stretch your fingers to hit the extreme right and left side keys.

The left profile of the INNOV8 houses the standard volume button, a 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB connection port. As always, we are always pleased with the presence of a 3.5mm audio jack, and we'll delve deeper into the audio performance of the INNOV8 in the upcoming pages. Moving on, we come to the shortcut keys that give you access to the INNOV8's key selling points: a slider button that switches between camera, video and playback mode, the microSD slot that supports SDHC of up to 16GB and finally, the camera button that links you to the 8-megapixel camera lens with auto-focus and a dual LED flash located at the back profile. Unlike the Samsung SGH-G810's sliding lens cover, the INNOV8 is protected by a shutter that opens up once you press the camera button to either take an image or a video.

In all honesty, if one were to take a look at the INNOV8 just from the back without sliding the device up or even checking out the 2.8-inch screen, you might see the familiarity of the INNOV8's aesthetic design to Samsung's compact digital camera lineup. As for its imaging capabilities, we'll explore upon this aspect in the next page.

Segmented as an infotainment device, the INNOV8 was given the right set of connection ports such as the 3.5mm audio jack, though we wished that the USB port would have been a mini-USB (which is more commonly used for other devices besides mobile phones) instead of micro-USB. Incidentally, you'll be utilizing the micro-USB as both your data and power connectivity port.

On its right profile, you have a dedicated slider button that switches between your image, video and playback mode for the 8-megapixel camera, which will be activated by the camera button situated at the bottom right. Both buttons flank the microSD slot, which supports SDHC of up to 16GB, giving the INNOV8 a potential storage capacity of 32GB (16GB internal and 16GB external)

Viewed from its back profile, it's understandable that some people might mistake the INNOV8 as one of Samsung's compact digital cameras, even more so with its 8-megapixel label and the dual LED flash situated at the top of the auto-focus lens.

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