Samsung Blast for T-Mobile Cell Phone Review - Imaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on August 30, 2007 Comment on this |
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Resolution (0.68)
To test resolution, we aim the cell phone's camera at an industry standard resolution chart. We then process the captured stills with Imatest, our image analysis software, which analyzes the image and produces a number of results. Resolution is measured in line width per pixel height (lw/ph), both vertically and horizontally, which describes the point at which the Blast starts interpreting alternating black and white lines as just gray. The resolution on the Samsung Blast is really quite bad. It could discern 392.1 lw/ph horizontally, and 345.6 lw/ph vertically. This isn't the worst we've seen, but it's certainly toward the bottom of the barrel. The photos are good for viewing on the Blast's screen, and sending via MMS or e-mail, but they wouldn't be good for printing out or enlarging in any way; in such a case, you'd really be better off relying on memory, or perhaps taking a quick sketch instead.
| Cell Phone | Samsung Blast | Apple iPhone | Sanyo Katana DLX |
| Score | 0.68 | 4.18 | 0.45 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 392.1/345.6 | 970/879 | 316.6/249.4 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | Nokia N73 | Sprint Upstage | Motorola Razr |
| Score | 3.98 | 1.94 | 1.13 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 859.9/773.4 | 660.8/549.2 | 521.7/242.2 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (4.48)
To test color, we take a few pictures of an industry standard color chart, then analyze them with our Imatest software. The results show how far off the phone's color interpretation is.
| Cell Phone | Samsung Blast | Apple iPhone | Sanyo Katana DLX |
| Score | 4.48 | 5.22 | 6.54 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | Nokia N73 | Sprint Upstage | Motorola Razr |
| Score | 5.88 | 3.85 | 3.26 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.44)
The Blast actually receives a good noise score, which isn't particularly surprising. Cameras with low resolution tend to have less noise, since they can't pick up as much detail. What this means is that, even in poor light, the Blast will still offer relatively similar performance. What this doesn't mean is that the Blast's performance will be in any way good.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| Samsung Blast | 1.44 |
| Apple iPhone | 1.20 |
| S anyo Katana DLX | 0.83 |
| Nokia N73 | 1.17 |
| Sprint Upstage | 1.45 |
| Motorola Razr | 1.05 |
Live Preview (4.0)
The live preview on the Blast is decent. The image kept up with our movement really well, even when we panned around quickly. The picture was subjected to vertically-scrolling gradiation, though. The color and resolution shown on screen seemed to be pretty close to what was displayed in the captured image.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.3)
Here we start with the phone in unlocked standby mode. We then start a timer and see how long it takes to open the camera and snap a picture. The time displayed on the resulting capture is what we use. At our fastest, we were able to complete this test in 3.75 seconds. This is slow for a phone with a dedicated camera key. Most of the time was spent hammering said key while waiting for the program to load. This is most likely fast enough to snap a portrait, but not anything that moves fast, such as small children or animals. You might be fine photographing, perhaps, your pet tortoise.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung Blast | 3.75 | 5.33 |
| Apple iPhone | 2.43 | 8.23 |
| S anyo Katana DLX | 3.10 | 6.45 |
| Nokia N73 | 5.30 | 3.77 |
| Sprint Upstage | 2.70 | 7.41 |
| Motorola Razr | 3.50 | 5.71 |
Shot to Shot Time (6.33)
This tests how long it takes to take consecutive pictures. Fortunately for the Blast, it has a Burst mode, which allowed it to take five pictures in 2.37 seconds. This works out to 2.11 fps. This is pretty fast. Usually using Burst mode means forfeiting quality, but the difference in quality on the Blast isn't really noticeable. Of course, the pictures aren't great to begin with, but it is nice to see the ability to snap images fairly quickly at the maximum resolution the camera can work at.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| Samsung Blast | 2.11 | 6.33 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.40 | 1.20 |
| S anyo Katana DLX | 2.10 | 6.30 |
| Nokia N73 | 0.52 | 1.56 |
| Sprint Upstage | 0.20 | 0.60 |
| Motorola Razr | 0.20 | 0.60 |
Shutter to Shot Time (5.71)
Here we test how long it takes the phone to capture your picture after you've hit the shutter key. We do five trials and average the times. The Blast was capable of snapping a photo 0.35 seconds after the button was pressed. This is on the fast side, with most phones taking closer to 0.4 seconds. Some phones that use auto focus lenses have glacial times that exceed three seconds.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung Blast | 0.35 | 5.71 |
| Apple iPhone | 0.40 | 5.00 |
| S anyo Katana DLX | 0.38 | 5.26 |
| Nokia N73 | 3.10 | 0.65 |
| Sprint Upstage | 0.30 | 6.67 |
| Motorola Razr | 0.43 | 4.65 |
Interface (4.0)
The camera interface is mostly straightforward, and offers quite a few options. In the live preview, the layout is standard: left/right is your white balance, and up/down zooms. There are a few indicators, like resolution and other settings, which will auto-hide if you're in the full screen viewfinder mode. The select button takes the picture.
The left soft key opens the Options menu. Here you can fiddle with a plethora of settings, from simple things like setting a timer to more advanced options like Shooting mode. You can also find the timer and options for various effects. Each option on the menu has a keypad shortcut, which is always a good addition. The keypad is also mapped to shortcuts in Live Preview mode as well, and there's a shortcut map under the Options menu. The map displays each shortcut's function as a symbol, most of which aren't very intuitive.
In an annoying default choice, the Blast is set to "take and send," meaning after each picture you take it will automatically save it locally, then ask you where you want to send the picture, either in an e-mail or MMS, or to your online T-zone album. You'll most likely want to visit the Shooting mode menu each time you boot up the camera. While this is an good option to include, it is an annoying default, especially when the camera's defaults reset on exit. Also, noticeably absent from the list of places you can send the picture to is the memory card.
Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The Blast's default view is "Line View," which shows three pictures at a time. Each picture entry contains a thumbnail, the picture's name, and how much memory it takes up. This view makes it easy to scroll through pictures, with virtually no loading time. Thumbnail view displays nine at a time, and again loads rather quickly.
The Blast also has some entertaining photo editing software, but nothing serious editors could use.
Under the Shooting mode menu lies the mosaic option, which also allows for some rudimentary photo editing. You can choose from one of 15 different templates, which divide the screen up into segments. Each segment represents a different frame you can fill with an image capture.
Some of the options can be put in place before or after you take the picture. Frames are such an option, but if you want the majority of them to work correctly, you'll want to include them beforehand. Frames basically stick graphical cutouts on top of your picture. These overlays include an underwater scene with a floating scuba mask, a clown, piles of money, and a bunny face with glasses. There are 29 in all. The overlays, which function like carnival cut-outs, are nearly impossible to line up correctly. The more scene-based overlays, like the underwater scene, or objects like the Groucho Marx glasses, take up such a huge portion of the screen it's hard to make out anything besides the graphic. In fact, the frames are so hilariously useless, you'll have a blast with them initially. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off fast.
The different effects you can add are fairly basic, such as sepia, black & white, and negative. There are two more advanced options, called emboss and sketch. Sketch is the more interesting of the two, making pictures seem like a comic book interpretation of the scene. You can add these before or after you take the picture.
Once you've taken a picture, you can add small emoticons or "clip art" pictures to your photo, a la stamps from Mario Paint. They are certainly similar in quality, although there are only 39 to choose from. They are also incredibly random, including plants, emoticon-like faces, animals, and a bloody nose. Adding the pictures will decrease the original image's quality, making it look oversharpened.
There is also a slide show feature, but it's incredibly basic. All you can do is set it to one or three seconds, and it will march through your album at those intervals.
Manual Control (3.0)
There are quite a few manual controls, which you can find by hitting the left soft key to bring up the Options menu, then clicking on photo settings. Here you can change the capture resolution, white balance, metering, ISO, and toggle on Scene mode, among other options. Metering and ISO aren't features commonly found on phones. You can set the metering to matrix, spot or center-weighted. ISO can be set to automatic, 100, 200, or 400.
Zoom (1.0)
The Blast supports 12x digital zoom. We only give one point to digital zoom, since it isn't a true zoom; it just crops and enlarges sections of the photo.
Focus (0.0)
The Blast has a fixed focus lens, which we do not award points for.
Flash (0.0)
The Blast doesn't have any flash capabilities.
Metering (8.0)
The Blast supports three different options for metering: Matrix, Center-Weighted, and Spot. You can also control brightness, either via the slider in viewfinder mode which has seven notches, or with the ISO settings. You can set ISO to auto, 100, 200, or 400.
White Balance (2.0)
The Blast has five presets for white balance: Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent, and Cloudy.
Image Handling (0.0)
This section scores things like white balance correction, color correction, red-eye reduction, cropping, or resizing. Therefore, although there's some image editing software here, as discussed in the photo album section, we don't award it any points, as none of the features are really useful.
Video
Overall Video Score (4.0)
The Blast can capture video at three different resolution levels, but none of them produce particularly good video captures. Even moderate movement results in a pixelated, choppy, artifact-filled mess. The color is undersaturated, The videos you can take with the Blast are good for sending via MMS, but that's about it.
Video Resolution (1.38)
Video capture can be set to one of three resolutions: 176 x 144, 160 x 120, and 128 x 96. Even at the highest setting, the Blast offers hideous quality. The video resolution test is the same as that for stills; we take five sample frames from random locations in our 30 second test video. The Blast managed 107.1 lw/ph horizontally and 129.2 vertically. This is pretty bad, though somehow better than still capturing. Again, these videos already look pretty bad on the small screen of the phone, so enlarging them on a computer screen or TV will only make a giant, pixelated mess.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| Samsung Blast | 107.1/129.2 | 1.38 |
| Apple iPhone | N/A: can't capture video | 0.0 |
| Sanyo Katana DLX | 200.5/181.2 | 3.63 |
| Nokia N73 | 272.4/224.8 | 6.13 |
| Sprint Upstage | 77.11/109.5 | 0.84 |
| Motorola Razr | 174.3/170 | 3.46 |
Video Compression (2.0)
The Blast captures video in MP4 format at 135 Kbps. This means most phones will be able to watch your terribly pixelated videos.
Interface (5.0)
The video interface is similar to that of the camera, only without as many options. The effects make the transition to video capture, as does the timer, but that's it. Fewer options allow the eponymous menu to fit on one screen, however, which makes navigating it much easier. The camcorder settings allow you to change the white balance, toggle audio record, change recording mode (for MMS/e-mail optimization), or change the resolution. Given how bad the max resolution is, we can see no reason why you'd want to lower it any. All in all though, the menus are reasonably well laid out, and having fewer options means it is much easier to browse around the menus, hence a slightly better score.
Manual Control (1.0)
The only manual control for your Blast's little camcorder is the brightness slider, which has seven different positions.
Zoom (1.0)
Like capturing stills, the Blast supports 12x digital zoom. Again, digital zoom only crops and resizes images, so we only award it one point.
Editing (0.0)
There isn't anything you can do with the Blast to edit videos.
Modes (4.0)
The Blast has an MMS mode and E-mail mode for video capture, which are more options than some phones offer.
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