Samsung G800 Review - a Heavyweight Contender

The Samsung G800 is one of the main handsets which I’ve been looking forward to scrutinising since its announcement. Obviously the main attraction (and marketing angle) is it being the first of the 5 Mega Pixel cameraphones to come with optical zoom, but obviously that doesn’t even cover half the story. Much in the same vein as the U600/U700 set; the G800 is the upgrade to the G600 and adds 3G into the list of features (amongst other things.)

The first thing to focus on is the dimensions of the G800 when compared with the G600. Frankly, there is no comparison to be made as where the G600 is sleek and compact, the G800 goes in a different direction and tips the scales at a whopping 134 grams, exceeding its predecessor by 30 grams. It’s also thicker though not quite as much as I was expecting, with the G800 at 18.9mm thick, only 3.9mm thicker than the G600. Overall the construction is actually very good; the slider is solid and everything else feels relatively secure, though for something that weighs this much, I would expect that.

A little concerning is the fact that extremely glossy materials have been used all over the G800, resulting in fingerprint marks becoming very prominent. Mind you, this issue pales in significance when seeing what the use of overly-glossy materials does to the display. In the G600, (a phone I have owned for a few months now) the display quality was excellent and also included a light sensor so that it could cope with all kinds of lighting variants. The G800 seems to me like a step backwards as the legibility when under any form of light is practically zero.

In keeping with the negative stance, the User Interface (UI) is much more basic than I expected. It has some similarities with the UI seen on the G600, but the fact is the G800’s reputedly inferior brother has a more advanced version and does a much better job.

The main attraction of the G800 will obviously be the camera with its 3X Optical Zoom, but when put to the test against various other similarly spec’d devices, including the G600 the results were a little startling. Considering the G800 is meant to be Samsung’s premier cameraphone, I was surprised to see that the G600 seems to develop equal or better images around 75% of all the time.

In conclusion, the G800’s bad points do let it down quite severely. The difficulty involved in reading the screen when under bright sunlight is sure to irritate many and the weight issue is enough to make the G800 classifiable as a dangerous weapon. Though this is probably down to the mechanics needed for the Optical Zoom feature, its lack of effectiveness doesn’t really warrant its inclusion or the detrimental effect it has.

The Samsung G800 is by no means a bad phone; it’s just the fact that it isn’t anywhere near as good as it could have been. Considering what it had to build on with the G600’s undoubted success, the fact that the ‘less powerful’ handset eclipses it on so many key factors means that it cannot be classed as anything other than a disappointment.

the Samsung G800 is available on a wide-range of mobile phone offers with various networks.