Review: Samsung Focus with Windows Phone 7
Photos
Photos from the five megapixel camera on the Samsung Focus looked pretty good. They weren't perfect, certainly not the best I've seen, but they are definitely above average for a camera phone. Colors looked bright and fresh, especially while viewing images on the phone's display. Viewed at full crop, images lost a lot of detail and could blur considerably. This seemed more like a focal issue. I tried shooting in normal and macro modes, but the camera couldn't quite nail closeups, and tended to focus on subjects farther back. If the phone had touch focus, that might have helped me choose and sharpen my subjects a little better. The flash on the camera was very helpful, and the self portrait I've included with my samples was taken in a completely dark room with only the flash for light. Colors there look even and accurate, not bluish or overexposed like you'll find on lesser cameras.
Video
The hi-def camcorder on the Samsung Focus didn't impress me as much as the still camera did. While my videos looked pretty good, even above average for the glut of 720p camcorder phones hitting the market, I've seen better on other high-end devices. Videos looked blurry with a general fuzziness to the details, when I really want hi-def videos to look as sharp as can be. The camcorder adjusted slowly to changes in lighting conditions. You can also see, at the end of my video, a strange shift in white balance that turns the entire scene a yellowish-green color. Sound quality during video recording was pretty good, and my voice hardly sounded muffled in the videos I shot.
To see my sample below at its best possible quality, be sure to change the vertical resolution to 720p by clicking the button on the video player, and watch the video full screen.
(My original Samsung Focus review did not include a Video section under Image Quality. Problems with Microsoft's transfer software, on both the Mac and Windows 7, kept me from being able to load my videos from the phone.)
Windows Phone 7: Hands-On
Samsung Focus
