We have seen a great many ridiculous specifications in our time, but why anyone would need a 12-megapixel camera in the first place, and that too in a phone, is well beyond us. The high megapixel count is understandable in a DSLR, but in a point-and-click or a cellphone, it’s just overkill and seems like a marketing ploy. Yet, here we have the new Samsung M8910 Pixon 12, all ready to dazzle the Indian audience.
“Speedy access to the camera mode, fast shutter speed and quick browsing, face tag and photo tag sorting are some of the key factors that consumers are looking for in their mobile phone cameras. Samsung Pixon 12 holds the answer to these pressing consumer needs and more,” said Sunil Dutt, Country Head, Samsung Telecom Division.
The 12-megapixel CMOS sensor is ably supported by a 28mm wide-angle lens with autofocus, xenon flash and power LED flash. Almost every feature you can think of is thrown into this lot, including tracking touch autofocus, geo-tagging, wide dynamic range, Smart Auto mode, image stabilisation, Beauty Shot, and face, smile and blink detection. It can’t cook your meals yet, but a little training should get it there too. As for video recording, the Pixon 12 can handle 720×480 pixels at 30 frames per second. All of this data can be stored onto a microSD card of up to 16GB.
The screen is another impressive aspect of the phone: The 3.1-inch AMOLED resistive touchscreen renders 16 million colours at a resolution of 480×800 pixels and comes with an accelerometer for auto-rotation purposes. The ‘resistive’ part is a bit of a put-off, but Samsung’s TouchWiz 2.0 UI does run pretty well on those.
Other features of the phone include 3G, GPS and A-GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with A2DP, stereo FM radio with RDS, multimedia player and TV-out. It’s missing a 3.5mm audio jack, but comes with an adapter for the same.
Overall, for a price of Rs 29,990, this one seems like a good camera with a phone attached to it.