HozNews

Typical price: £TBC

Pros:
8-megapixel camera
Optical joystick
8GB internal memory
Fully featured with WiFi and GPS

Cons:
Quite chunky
Over-sensitive optical joystick

Verdict: The most impressive Symbian S60 handset out there. It doesn’t miss a feature or a trick. Simply stunning

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

More info: Samsung website

Available from: Samsung i8510 at Carphone Warehouse

Compare all Samsung i8510 deals online.

Samsung has blasted its competitors out of the water, by launching the astonishing Symbian S60 i8510 smartphone.

It’s not surprising that Samsung is getting stick about the Nokia-style interface of the Symbian i850, and the similarities with the design of the Nokia N95 8GB. Sure, it has its common ground but to be fair it, uses the same operating system with Samsung’s UI. What is special though is the sheer number of features that Samsung has managed to fit into the i8510.

For starters, there’s an eight-megapixel camera. This is controlled by a switch on the top, like on the LG Viewty. You can toggle between camera, video camera and gallery really quickly. It’s not just the resolution of the camera that beats the likes of Sony Ericsson (its 8-megapixel snapper is due out in September too) and Nokia (rumours suggest a December launch of a higher resolution device), but the capabilities the snapper has are comparable to a standalone compact camera.

In the settings menu, you’ll find a whole host of features, including smile detection, face detection and blink detection, which are fairly reliable to improve your snaps, but sometimes do slip up.

The camera modes also beat anything else on the cameraphone market. One of the most fun functions is the panorama mode, where you move the phone either right, left, up or down while the handset takes eight photos. It then stitches these together to make a panoramic shot. Although you do get some interesting results the first couple of times you attempt this, after a while when you have mastered hand stability, you can achieve some really stunning photos.