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Generally speaking, the cameras of smartphones nowadays have become more of a point of interest than the phone capabilities. In this sense, Samsung Innov8′s impressive 8.0-megapixel camera won’t fail imaging addicts, offering excellent photo quality as well as editing features. On other hand, manufactures of this phone have never forgotten the fact that it is a phone after all, with a good call performance and a number of fantastic features.

The black minimalist Samsung Innov8 is compact, sporting a dimension of 3.9 x 1.9 x 0.6 inches and a weight of 4.8 ounces, offering a solid feel in the hand but remains comfortable to hold and to keep in the pocket. It also features an easy-to-use slider mechanism. It’s LCD measures 2.8 inches with 16.7 million colors, displaying graphics bright and beautiful, although there’s a problem in viewing the screen in direct light. Users can also personalize the display with color themes and wallpapers.

Samsung Innov8′s simplicity of menus is deeply indebted to its operating system, the Symbian Version 9.3. Users can choose to set the menu either in list or grid view and popular features can easily be found.

A shortcut bar, which can serve access to a user-customizable shortcuts menu can be activated on the standby screen. Pre-programmed tabs include the calendar, the music player, the FM radio, and the personalization menu. The navigation array is located below the display. It has a square four-way toggle with central OK button, surrounded by two soft keys, Talk and End/power controls and silver-colored shortcut keys for the multimedia gallery and the main menu which can easily be spotted.

An interesting feature of the Innov8 is the optical mouse, which isn’t actually a mouse used in computers but it’s actually a mechanism that allows users to navigate the phone’s menus by sliding the finger across the OK button and moving up and down and side to side through menus and lists, although some may find this feature hard to understand at first. The spacious keypad is hidden behind the slider and is equipped with a bright backlighting. There are no problems with dialing the numbers but texting is a bit awkward. The clear button is also inaccessibly located on the top row of the keypad. The volume rocker/camera zoom control, the 3.5mm headset jack, the microSD card slot, camera control, and the micro USB slot are on the left spine. The camera lens sits on the back, below the flash.

The 8.0-megapixel camera of the Samsung Innov8 also includes a video side which can record clips in two resolutions (640×480 and 320×240) with sound. The phone can be connected to the PC using USB cable, Bluetooth, or a memory card. An application called Print OTG helps in transferring images directly to a printer. The Innov8 can accommodate 18 types of phone numbers and a variety of information on its phone book. Other phone features include vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, a calendar, a calculator, an alarm clock, a notepad, and a currency/unit converter. Multimedia features include music player, FM radio and video player.

Wireless connectivity features in Innov8 include HSDPA 3G support, full Bluetooth, a speakerphone, a file manager, a ZIP manager for compressing files, USB transfer and mass storage, instant messaging, and a voice recorder. It also supports POP3 e-mail access via the RoadSync application that delivers push e-mail for Microsoft Exchange for corporate e-mail contacts and calendar.

The Symbian OS accepts third party applications which include a dedicated Google portal for maps, Gmail, and search, and Yahoo Go for maps and driving directions, as wells as Real Player app, QuickOffice, Fring, GyPSii, DLNA , Adobe Reader, CNN Mobile, Samsung Mobile Navigator, and 3D games.

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Fashion phones continue to invade the gizmo world with the Samsung Emporio Armani Night Effect M7500, although unlike the earlier Samsung Emporio Armani handset that sports an 8MP camera, this thing doesn’t have such fancy and its tag price doesn’t sound as luxurious as the brand, which may send budget-conscious fashion victims into frenzy, but the bad news is the cut in price has some sacrifices.

The good things first. The quad-band GSM Samsung M7500 has a lot to offer with music, and it features HSDPA to 3.6Mbps, a 3-megapixel camera with side-button (notice the big cut in pixels), front camera for two-way video-calling and FM radio. It measures 114.9mm x 47.4mm x 12mm, tall yet easy to hold, and its rubbery backplate assists with grip. The corners of the screens sports shininess contrasted with the number pad’s brushed metal look.

The number pad is responsive and has nicely spaced keys, and the navigation buttons is raised from its surround and relatively big. The screen, although small at 2.2 inches, is delight to look at as it implores a clear, sharp and bright AMOLED.

We therefore conclude that the Samsung M7500 is a well-designed phone, but the brand name shouts so loud at the back of the handset, broadcasting to the whole world that the user has an Armani phone. Brand conscious people may fall in love with this detail but others may find this thing a distraction to the design’s entirety. And the branding doesn’t stop, as the phone has blue, green, red and black themes that actually refer to the side lighting for the three buttons on the right side, and another Emporio Armani brand on the left side. The good news is, you have the option to turn off the lights.

While there are five shortcut menus, there are nothing default for contacts, which is a disappointment. Thankfully these shortcuts can be changed, but what a big mistake for Samsung not to allocate one for the most used menu. The menu system has a carousel interface that forces users to cycle through each menu item using the navigation button, which will take some time for a user to get where he wanted to go.

Let’s go back to music, which is the high point of this Armani phone. It has good audio quality and control of music is easy because of the playback buttons on the right side. A 120MB internal memory is supplied, which is expandable to 1GB via microSD (another pity for the small storage space) slot under the battery cover.

The camera lacks flash and takes below average photos despite the presence of auto focus. The only good thing is the built-in ShoZu client which allows us to instantly upload the images to the web, but what’s something to boast about if pictures fared not good enough in image quality.

Like most phones nowadays, the Samsung Armani features good call quality and battery life (420 minutes of talk time and 345 hours of standby). Other features of this fashion phone are web browser, calendar, memo maker, tasks manager, world clock, calculator, unit converter, basic image editor, voice recorder, timer, stopwatch, RSS reader and five alarms.

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Battling out with other popular smartphones like T-Mobile Dash and Motorola Q is the Samsung SGH-i607, more popularly known as Samsung BlackJack. It once held the record of being the thinnest QWERTY device in the world with dimensions of 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.6 inches beating Motorola Q’s 4.5 x 2.5 x 0.4 inches. Samsung Black Jack weighs 3.5 ounces and has been commendable for offering comfort to its users, as it slides well to the pocket and grips easily. Thanks to its slimmer body.

BlackJack’s compacted aesthetics can knock design lovers off their feet, but there are limitations. BlackJack’s 2.25-inch display is smaller as compared to Motorola Q’s 2.50-inch display beside the fact that it is not a touch screen. Color and resolution aren’t compromised though, with its 65,000 color output and 320 x 320 pixel resolution, texts, images and videos are displayed at their best. The slippery navigation keys are also a limitation, although there are also a number of ways to navigate around: including the thumbwheel and the back button. The QWERTY keyboard is very easy to use, with its backlit oval-shaped buttons for a convenient way of typing in dim-lighted areas. The left side of the phone is where the volume controller and headset/power adapter jack is located.

The upper right side is where the microSD expansion slot is located. A travel charger and a USB Cable are included in every purchase of a BlackJack smartphone. BlackJack connects through the Internet via the HSPDA that can transmit data up to 14,4 mbps. It also includes 3G support for more accessible video and audio streaming, web browsing and downloading games. One can also import their music library that may contain MP3, AAC, WAV, MP4 and WMV files through the MicroSD card and can be played using Windows Media Player 10 Mobile.

The operating system used in BlackJack is the Smartphone Edition which does not include the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite. An application called the Picsel Viewer Suite must be installed to open and view Word and Excel documents, PDFs and Power Point presentations. Other featured tools in the BlackJack are calculator, contacts list, task lists, calendar, notes, voice recorder and stopwatch. However, there are no WiFi connections.

Messaging capabilities of the Samsung Blackjack is also impressive. It can access e-mails using Outlook, POP, SMTP and IMAP account. Real-time e-mail delivery is also possible through Microsoft Direct Push, Good Mobile Messaging and Cingular XpressMail. Instant messaging is also supported so lovers of AOL, MSN and Yahoo messengers need not fret because this is the perfect feature for them. Of course, text messaging and MMS will always be there. Reaching out to people proves to be effortless with BlackJack’s quad-band world phone that can be used in more than 180 countries. Speakerphone, three-way calling and conference calling are other talking capabilities embedded within the BlackJack.

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