My point and shoot camera is a 7.2 megapixel Casio. I love that thing, and it takes some really nice photos.  The Samsung Memoir is basically an 8 megapixel point and shoot with Xenon flash and some nice photo enhancing features. Oh, and it’s also a cell phone with touchscreen controls and 3G internet. My Casio doesn’t have that.

The Samsung Memoir, out on T-Mobile, is the follow-up device to the Behold-a 5MP camera with phone (with this phone, it’s a distinction because the devices don’t look like camera phones, but rather phone cameras).  It features the TouchWiz interface, which gives a very smooth and snappy response.The phone had lots of nice subtle features that made the overall experience enjoyable.

Size and feel

The Memoir is basically the size of a point and shoot, which I feel is the point.  It’s got some heft to it, giving a feel of quality, and it’s just the right size.  I say that because if the Memoir was any larger it would be too big.  As it stands, the device fits well in your pocket, and is a comfortable size in hand.  At first I thought the protruding optics on the back of the phone (or is it the front of the camera?) would pose a problem, but it isn’t noticeable when being used or carried.

Call Quality and Phone Functionality

The Memoir performed well on phone calls. I had clear reception and sound on all the calls I made, and the speakers were apparently high quality. The phone interface was easy to navigate and the UI performed smoothly.  The phone had decent reception most times, and I never had a dropped call.

TouchWiz and the UI

I like this interface. The widget placement on the home screen makes it easy to get to the things you want easily, and is probably the first interface that successfully uses widgets.  The most-used widget is the myFav’s which no longer takes up the whole display, and can easily be relocated to any position on the screen.  Using the full size keyboard for texting was accurate though the pop-up letter placement goes to the side, which is generally covered by your thumbs, so I have no idea why Samsung chose to do that.  Otherwise, there were few typing mistakes during my testing.

Camera

The 8MP is a lot, but in my testing, I found that it couldn’t really compete with a less expensive point and shoot.  The xenon flash was a nice addition, but the photos turned up soft as a result of all the noise correction the camera was doing.  In all reality, the 8MP is a bit much. I appreciate that it’s able to produce large, relatively high quality photos, but the sensors of the camera are so small, the photos still look like they were from a camera phone…except bigger.

Browsing and Internet

T-Mobile’s 3G is still in its infancy, but I had some great coverage, and my browsing speeds were relatively fast.  I loaded websites on the HTML web browser in roughly 30 seconds or so. Using the browser was also one of the better experiences I’ve had on a touch screen (non-iPhone) device.  Scrolling was smooth, and general operation was nice.

Final Impressions

The Memoir is a quality phone, with a hyped up camera that really doesn’t make a big enough impact to influence the decision to buy the phone or not.  The Behold has relatively all the same features, same form factor, and a 5MP camera for a $100 less than the Memoir’s $249.  If you’re looking at this phone, I would consider the Behold instead, or another phone, and use the money you saved to buy a decent point and shoot camera.

The first photos in the gallery are from the Memoir. You can see what I mean on the softness. All the noise reduction gets in the way of taking clear and sharp pictures.