Components

The Samsung i8 sports a 2.7-inch color LCD screen, but no optical viewfinder. 

LCD Screen

The 230,000-pixel LCD screen displays nice colors, but depicts movement as quite jerky, which is most likely due to a slow refresh rate. Pressing the top button of the control dial cycles the screen through three display modes. One displays all control settings, one removes most display items, allowing full view of your subject, and one provides shooting tips at the bottom of the screen. The screen can be viewed up to an angle of approximately 45 degrees on either side before it darkens significantly. The angle is a bit less from top to bottom. The view could be better, especially because the camera doubles as a video player. The shiny screen gets easily marked up by fingerprints, but is easily cleaned by a soft cloth.

Flash

The i8 has a built-in flash located to the side of the lens. This causes the illumination to be slightly off center, giving subjects slight shadows. The flash is pleasing for portraits because it doesn’t blow out foreheads, but it also doesn’t have much range. However, Samsung claims the flash range will be changed for the full production model. The i8 has six Flash modes: Auto, Auto and Red-Eye Reduction, Fill-In Flash, Slow Sync, Flash Off, and Red-Eye Fix.

Zoom Lens

The i8’s optical system consists of an internal 6.3 to 18.9mm (38 to 114mm in 35mm equivalent) f/3.5 to f/4.5 Samsung lens. It has a 3x optical zoom, and 5x digital zoom. An internal lens is much more durable than an extending zoom lens, but the tiny aperture range limits the amount of light let into the camera. The zoom itself is smooth and quiet but quite slow, allowing seven zoom steps between 1x and 3x. In Macro mode, the camera could get as close as two inches to an object before losing focus. This is quite impressive.

Design / Layout

**Model Design / Appearance
**The Samsung i8 is a completely different looking camera than its predecessor, the i7. The i7, a larger camera, has a curved metal body with a large protruding clip on its right side. Its brushed metal surface gives it a high-tech industrial look. The i8, by contrast, has a slim and glossy plastic body with softly rounded edges and no protruding features. The shiny plastic scratches more easily than a metal surface, meaning you might want to carry it in a camera case to keep the i8 looking pretty. It’s a cute little camera.

Size / Portability

Only about 3.5 inches wide, the i8 is very small and slim and will easily slide into a pocket. It is also very light; almost too light, in fact. The camera feels a bit flimsy and hollow, and wouldn’t likely survive being dropped or crushed. The shiny plastic surface is quite slippery, so you’d better use a wrist-strap while you’re shooting.

Handling

The smooth rounded edges of the i8 make it easy to hold and support, though as we mentioned above, it is quite slippery. There is no grip or even any plastic bumps to hold onto. The placement of the lens in the upper corner of the front makes it easy to accidentally stick your fingers in front while you’re trying to take a picture. Imagine your frustration if you took a great shot only to have a blurry finger in the upper corner.

**Control Buttons / Dial Positioning / Size
**While the i8 is easy to support, the buttons are quite difficult to press down. Not only that, but they are extremely tiny, and most of them are clustered in the lower right corner of the back. Extended periods of shooting will make your fingers tired, and you may hit the wrong control while fumbling between the tiny buttons. The zoom control is easier to use. Its up and down lever is easy to flick both ways, though the zoom itself is quite slow. The button labels are small but intuitive, using well-established industry symbols.

**Menu
**The Function menu is great; it is very clear and contains the most important manual controls. The Main menu is also straightforward, and organized into clear pages. The "M" media menu is rather confusing, however, because you can cycle side to side as well as up and down.

"E" menu  

 *Function menu*

**Ease of Use
**Grandma could take simple photos with the i8, but she might have a lot of trouble trying to use the MP3 player. The camera also has a display mode that gives on-screen tips for shooting. Unfortunately, this mode was not fully operational in the pre-production model we looked at.

Modes

**Auto Mode
**To get to the Auto mode, you need to press the "M" button and cycle through the modes by pressing the control dial to the right or left. The Samsung i8 has an Auto mode as well as a Fun mode. Fun mode is fully automatic except for manual adjustment of picture size and quality, as well as exposure metering.

Movie Mode

Like the Auto and Fun modes, the Movie mode is accessed through the "M" button. Movies can be recorded in the following sizes: 800 x 592, 640 x 480, and 320 x 240. There is also a frame rate option, with the ability to choose 30, 20, or 15 fps. However, the 800 x 592 frame size can only be played at 20 fps, making motion quite jerky. The zoom can be used during movies, but the autofocus wouldn’t kick in, so using the zoom is pretty useless. Perhaps Samsung will fix this in the full production model.

The Movie mode offers three manual control options: metering, white balance, and exposure compensation. Some point-and-shoots don’t offer any manual controls in Movie mode, so this is a plus. In playback, the i8 offers several editing effects: Rotate, Color, and Fun. The effects in these menus are the same as for still images (see the Image Parameters section further along in the review).

Drive / Burst Mode

In Program mode, you can access the burst options through the Function menu. These options are Single, Continuous, Auto Exposure Bracket (AEB), Wise Shot, and Motion Capture.

In any mode you can press the drive button to change the self timer options. These include 10-second, 2-second, Double, and Motion Timer.

Playback Mode

The Playback mode is accessible through the playback button located below the control dial. You can cycle through your photos one at a time using the control dial or use the zoom lever to zoom out and scroll through your photos in groups. You can also zoom in on your photos to check detail or focus. But, like the slow zoom in Shooting mode, the zoom in playback is sluggish. The 2.7-inch LCD screen is nice and large, and certainly helps you see your photos better. However, keep in mind that there are other cameras on the market with even bigger 3-inch screens.

There are also a slew of picture editing options in Playback mode. Pressing the "E" button in Playback mode brings up five editing menus: Resize, Rotate, Color, Image Adjust, and Fun. These effects are impressive and allow for some creative editing control without using a computer.
   
**Custom Image Presets
**The i8 has a plethora of Scene modes, providing simple solutions for a wide variety of tricky shooting situations. They are accessible by pressing the "M" button and scrolling up (not side to side). This is a bit confusing, and can make it difficult to know exactly what mode you’re shooting in. The pre-production model didn’t have descriptions for each Scene mode, but there were labels indicating the final model will describe each mode. The Scene modes included on the i8 are Children, Landscape, Closeup, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Firework, Beach and Snow, Self Shot, Food, Café, Nightscape, and Portrait.

Also available in the "M" menu, but not with the Scene modes, is a Digital Image Stabilization (DIS) mode. This mode boosts the ISO speed to 1600 so the shutter speed is fast enough to capture photos without blur. This is nowhere near as useful as optical image stabilization, which can limit blur at any ISO speed. Photos taken at ISO 1600 are going to be much noisier than at lower ISO speeds. Another image preset on the i8 is the Face Detection mode, accessible by pressing the face detection button on top of the camera. We’ll talk more about this feature in the Autofocus section.

Control Options

Manual Control Options

The Samsung i8 is not a camera for advanced photographers who need lots of manual controls. Rather, it is a trendy model for less experienced shooters favoring simplicity and ease of use. There are no controls for shutter speed or aperture, but the camera does include manual options available in the Program mode, such as metering, ISO speed, white balance, and exposure compensation.

Auto Focus

The i8 features TTL (through the lens) autofocus technology, a widely used method of autofocus in digital cameras. In the Shooting menu, the camera offers two autofocus options, Center and Multi. The Multi mode uses several points, shown with green boxes, to find the best focus for each shot, while Center mode only focuses on the center of the screen. There is a yellow assist light to help the camera achieve focus. The i8 does not appear to have any Continuous autofocus mode, meaning each time you move your camera or change the zoom, you will have to refocus by pressing down halfway on the shutter button. Samsung reports a range of 80 centimeters to infinity in Normal mode, 5 to 80 centimeters in Macro mode, and 1 to 5 centimeters in Super Macro mode.

As we mentioned in the Components section, the i8 has a Macro mode that works quite well, getting as close as 2 inches before losing focus. The camera also has a Face Detection mode, which looks for faces and focuses on them. Samsung reports the i8 can detect up to nine faces at a time. Our experience with it showed the camera could indeed detect faces if they were facing the camera directly. We couldn’t get nine faces at once, but the mode looks helpful for achieving sharp focus in group shots.

**Manual Focus
**The i8 does not have a manual focus option. This is just as well, because manual focusing in point-and-shoot cameras is almost never easy to use.

Exposure

There are no shutter speed or aperture controls in the i8, but there are metering and exposure compensation options. As is typical of many point-and-shoots, the exposure compensation can be adjusted from -2 EV to +2 EV, at 0.3 EV steps. There is also an exposure bracketing mode in the Burst tab of the Function menu in Program mode. Users will have to determine the correct exposure by eye, because there is no live histogram display.

Metering

There are three metering modes available, Center Weighted, Spot, and Multi, located in the Function menu. This gives a good range of options for different shooting situations, from backlit scenes (Spot metering) to scenes of high contrast (Multi metering).

White Balance

The i8 includes Custom and Auto white balance options, as well as a number of presets for different types of light sources. The presets include Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent H, Fluorescent L, and Tungsten. The Custom setting is quite easy to use; just point your camera at something white and hit the shutter. These options give shooters a lot of control of white balance, which is very important if you find your photos are taking on odd color casts. However, there aren’t more advanced white balance options, such as Kelvin temperature adjustment, white balance compensation, or white balance bracketing.

ISO

ISO speed can be adjusted in Program mode through the Function menu. ISO speeds of Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, or 3200 (at only 3 megapixels) can be chosen. This is a solid range for a point-and-shoot, but we’ll have to wait until we get the camera in our test lab to see how noisy the high ISO settings are.

Shutter Speed

Samsung reports the i8’s shutter speed ranges from 1 to 1/2000 of a second, with exposure length increasing up to 16 seconds in Night mode. Shutter speed cannot be adjusted manually. This is a reasonable range, and even allows users some room to experiment with longer exposures in Night mode.

Aperture

The aperture range on the i8 is f/3.5 to f/4.5, and like shutter speed cannot be adjusted manually. Often a problem in internal lenses, this limited aperture range may not let in enough light for low light shooting, causing blurry photos.

Image Parameters

**Picture Quality / Size Options
**The 8-megapixel Samsung i8 has a number of image size options, including 8, 7, 6 (wide), 5, 3, and 1-megapixel. There are also three different image quality options: Super Fine, Fine, and Normal. Reducing the quality or size allows for more pictures to be taken, but will hurt resolution and image quality. If you have a large memory card, keep your camera set to 8-megapixels and Super Fine quality. The i8 records all photos as JPEGs.

Picture Effects

The i8 has an extensive color adjustment menu accessible by hitting the "E" button. The Color modes available are Normal, Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, and Classic. There are also a number of straight color tints that can be added to photos, and sliders to adjust saturation, contrast, and sharpness. Auto Contrast Balance (ACB) is another option, which can be set to either on or off in the Shooting menu. This setting is supposed to increase the contrast in your photos, an effect that is often pleasing. Not all of these options will be incredibly useful, but they provide a fun option to fool around with if you get bored with the colors of your photos.

In playback, there are another slew of picture editing options. Pressing the "E" button in Playback mode brings up five editing menus: Resize, Rotate, Color, Image Adjust, and Fun. These effects are impressive and allow for creative editing control without using a computer.
 

Connectivity / Extras

Connectivity
Jacks / Ports / Plugs

The Samsung i8 has only one port, which serves as a power source, USB connector, A/V link, and headphone jack. It is located on the right side of the camera. Since one of the major features of the camera is its MP3 player, it is a shame there isn’t a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Direct Print Options

There is a button on the lower right of the i8’s back that allows Direct Printing when connected to a Pictbridge-compatible printer.

Battery

The i8 uses a single SLB 0937 (900mAh) rechargeable battery located in the battery slot on the bottom of the camera.

Memory

Memory specifications are not finalized for the i8 yet, but expect the camera to accept SD and SDHC memory cards, as well as MMCplus. No word yet on the amount of internal memory, but Samsung speculates it will be around 200MB. A device with so many multimedia options would do well to have a lot of internal memory.

Other Features

This is where the i8 differentiates itself from the rest of the point-and-shoot cameras on the market. In addition to the camera and video modes, the device has four other extra features: an MP3 player, a PMP multimedia player, a World Tour Guide, and a Text Viewer. Each of these modes is accessible through the "M" button, found by scrolling up to the Multimedia menu.

MP3 Player

The MP3 player mode is a simple display that allows users to start and stop songs and skip between them. It is very easy to use, though again, the buttons on the i8 are very small and difficult to press. You certainly couldn’t use it with gloves on. There are several Sound Effects available in the music player: Normal, Classic, Dance, Jazz, Live, Rock, and SEC Special Song Effect. Each of these effects changes the sound of your music. The MP3 player mode is a fun addition to the camera features, and the i8 is small enough to fit into a pocket, just like many dedicated MP3 players.

PMP Multimedia

The PMP Multimedia mode plays videos in Xvid MPEG4 format, but can play other files using the Samsung Converter S/W. Video playback looks nice on the i8, though the 2.7-inch screen, while large for a camera, made it hard to see details. The playback suffers from the LCD screen problems we mentioned in the Components section above, which include jerkiness to on-screen motion. This is particularly headache-inducing when trying to watch a movie. The screen also doesn’t have a great up and down viewing angle, so you’ll have to make sure the camera is directly facing you when you use the PMP mode.

World Tour Guide

The World Tour Guide didn’t work in the pre-production model, but Samsung says it will give travel advice for approximately 30 countries.

*Text Viewer
*The Text viewer allows text files (TXT extension), saved either in Windows or Mac OS, to be viewed on-screen. It supports a number of languages.

Overall Impressions

Value

The Samsung i8 will retail at $299, down from the initial price of £230 (approximately $450) for its predecessor, the i7. This puts the camera about in the middle of the pack for a point-and-shoot market that usually ranges from $150 to $500. As a camera, the i8 doesn’t offer a ton of value, but looks to be a quite capable for casual use. It is housed in a fairly flimsy plastic casing that won’t hold up to much abuse. However, the i8 also offers music and multimedia Playback modes; something you won’t find in many other 8-megapixel cameras. Neither of these modes is fantastic, but they do the trick for limited operation. Overall, the i8 is a fairly good value for the different features you get. The question is whether you actually need them.

**Who It’s For
***Point-and-Shooters - *The i8 is made for point-and-shooters. It lacks advanced manual controls, but still allows control over options like ISO speed, white balance, and metering. The camera is fairly easy to use, until you start delving into the extra features.

*Budget Consumers - *At a $299 MSRP, the i8 isn’t a bargain, but it’s less expensive than some other point-and-shoots. As a hybrid music/video/camera device, the i8 is capable but not spectacular. You will probably still want to hang onto your other MP3 player.

*Gadget Freaks - *The hybrid features of the i8 make it tempting for gadget freaks, but considering the fact that many of today’s cell phones combine similar features, gadget freaks will probably be more attracted to slicker products like the Apple iPhone.

Manual Control Freaks - There are many other point-and-shoot options on the market that offer more manual controls than the Samsung i8.

Pros / Serious Hobbyists - This cute, shiny camera with limited controls will not attract professional photographers or serious amateurs.

Conclusion

Conclusion

One of the more interesting new cameras introduced at the CES 2008 show in Las Vegas, the Samsung i8 combines fairly standard camera and video features with MP3 playback, video playback, a travel guide, and a text viewer, making it a unique hybrid device.

The i8 is far different in appearance than its predecessor, the i7. The i7, a heavier, metal, industrial-looking camera, has been replaced by the cute, glossy i8 that slides right into a pocket. Despite its stylish design, the i8 is rather slippery, with no grips to hold onto. Also, the control buttons are very small and hard to press, making fingers tired during extended use, and the glossy exterior, while attractive, is easily smudged and scratched.

As a camera, the Samsung i8 is a decent point-and-shoot model, providing 8 megapixels, a Face Detection mode, a 2.7-inch LCD screen, and several manual controls. The menus are straightforward until you venture into the Multimedia menu, where you need to keep a close eye on what mode you end up in. The camera features a number of fun image and video effects, some available before you shoot, and some available in playback. There is a Fun mode for simplified shooting, as well as an extensive list of Scene mode options for various shooting situations.

Where the i8 sets itself apart from the pack is in its multimedia features, especially the MP3 player and PMP Multimedia mode. These features are easy to use and access, though are limited by the hard-to-press buttons and the poor refresh rate of the LCD screen. The i8 isn’t going to replace your MP3 player, so if you’re looking for a device that will lessen the number of gadgets in your pocket, you may want to look at other products, especially hybrid cell phones like the Apple iPhone. If you’re looking for a decent 8-megapixel camera that has extra features to keep you entertained, the i8 is an attractive device.