Samsung Beat for T-Mobile Cell Phone Review - Imaging

Mark Brezinski
Published on February 21, 2008 Comment on this

Resolution (0.70)

Entry-level phones generally have very poor resolution scores, and the Beat certainly participates in this trend. Though, sadly, it isn't even the lowest-scoring phone on the table below, it is by no means a good score. We measure resolution in line widths per pixel height, or lw/ph. A good score would be between 900 and 1000 lw/ph. The Beat scored about half that if you average its horizontal and vertical scores. Even the W385 -- which comes free with contract -- received a better score in this section.

We test resolution by taking a picture of an industry standard resolution chart. We then process the resulting image captures with our Imatest software, which is essentially like an eye test. Imatest determines how many individual black lines the camera can discern -- as opposed to interpreting the area as blurry gray -- and outputs a measurement in line widths per pixel height (again, lw/ph).

Cell Phone	Samsung Beat	Razr2 V8	Samsung Blast
Score	0.70	4.29	0.68
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	414.5 / 674.9	982 / 982	392.1 / 345.6
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Samsung SLM	Motorola W385	Samsung Juke
Score	0.88	1.22	0.40
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	444 / 476	524.3 / 580.4	300 / 295
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (4.72)
Considering how poorly the Beat's resolution performance was, we would've expected a lower score on its color representation. The Beat, however, is actually fairly accurate with its portrayal of color. Colors will be (sometimes dramatically) undersaturated, but that's a typical flaw in lower-class cameras. We were pleased to see that colors weren't being misrepresented otherwise, such as purples appearing red, or yellows appearing green.

The graph above and on the left is the actual capture we made with the phone, plus a few overlays Imatest threw on. There are two overlays: the small, innermost rectangle is the ideal color, and the larger square is the ideal adjusted for luminance. Generally speaking, under perfect conditions, the background (the actual capture) should match with the ideal color. Since such a situation would never occur, the adjusted ideal is a much more realistic goal.

The graph above and to the right graphs the differences between the captured and ideal colors on a gamut chart. The squares are the ideal color, and are attached by a line to the color the camera actually captured. Obviously, the longer the line, the further off the color was.

Cell Phone	Samsung Beat	Razr2 V8	Samsung Blast
Score	4.72	4.41	4.48
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Samsung SLM	Motorola W385	Samsung Juke
Score	2.15	4.20	5.50
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.22)
Relatively speaking, the Beat didn't do a great job with noise. It was consistent for most lighting levels, but the drop to lower light nearly doubled the amount of noise. As you may have noticed, however, all the scores below are below a two. The reason for this is that, as of this moment, no cell phone is plagued by low noise image captures. Even a low-end digital camera will have less noise than an average cell phone camera.

Cell Phone	Score
Samsung Beat	1.22
Razr2 V8	0.91
Samsung Blast	1.44
Samsung SLM	1.48
Motorola W385	1.28
Samsung Juke	1.50

Live Preview (4.0)
The live preview on the Beat isn't the worst we've seen. It does tend to blur, and the refresh rate seems to be a little slow, but you won't run into a delay between the scene and the screen. Pixelation is minimal, though you'll notice it on diagonal lines. For the most part, color and clarity are the same as in the captured photo. You could certainly do far worse in an entry-level phone.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.59)
We were able to snap a picture with the Beat 4.36 seconds after first flipping it open. For a phone with a dedicated camera key, this is very slow. The entire process seems to take slightly longer than it should, from waiting for the application to open, to the shutter-to-shot time.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Samsung Beat	4.36	4.59
Razr2 V8	4.56	4.39
Samsung Blast	3.75	5.33
Samsung SLM	3.7	5.41
Motorola W385	1.86	10.75
Samsung Juke	1.89	10.58

Shot to Shot Time (5.13)
With burst mode enabled, we were able to take a set of five pictures in 2.92 seconds. This is roughly 1.71 frames per second, which is a good score. Interestingly enough, the only phones that were faster than the beat were also made by Samsung.

There are two thing to note with the Beat's burst mode. First, the first picture is snapped a bit slower than when burst mode isn't enabled. Secondly, there are two resolution options for burst mode. We performed the timing test with "Normal" quality, but opting for "High" should result in the same FPS.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Samsung Beat	1.71	5.13
Razr2 V8	0.58	1.74
Samsung Blast	2.11	6.33
Samsung SLM	2.1	6.30
Motorola W385	0.41	1.23
Samsung Juke	0.56	1.68

Shutter to Shot Time (5.13)
The length of delay between pushing the shutter key and the picture snapping was 0.39 seconds for the Beat. As you can see in the below table, this is about average, with the Razr2 V8 coming in at exactly the same time. The Juke is, by far, an overachiever, but the Beat should satisfy most quick-draw photographers.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Samsung Beat	0.39	5.13
Razr2 V8	0.39	5.13
Samsung Blast	0.35	5.71
Samsung SLM	0.3	6.67
Motorola W385	0.4	5.00
Samsung Juke	0.09	22.22

Interface (4.0)

The Beat's interface is simple, once you figure out what the soft key symbols mean (hint: left is menu, and right is exit). The live preview uses the whole screen, which is nice, but the icons at the bottom aren't translucent and never hide, meaning they'll always be in the way. Fortunately, they're small and don't sit on a screen-obfuscating toolbar. The d-pad functions do hide, however, so you'd better commit the following to memory: up and down fiddle with the zoom, left and right adjust brightness.

The initial menu is laid out fairly well. Items like "Set default destination" could've been filed under the Camera Settings menu to reduce clutter, but otherwise it's organized well. When you highlight an option, a small box will pop down that says your current setting. There are options for burst mode, a timer, effects, or frames, as well as shortcuts to video capture and the picture album. At the bottom you'll even find a transcript of all the keypad shortcuts used by the camera app. The settings menu will let you alter the size of the picture (1280x1024, 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480, 320x240, and128x160 -- phew), throw guides and whatnot onto the live preview, or alter the sounds the camera makes. This menu is also where the scene modes and white balance hide.

One thing most users will have to change immediately is the "Shooting mode" setting. The default mode for single shot capturing is "Take and Send". This means you'll be asked where you'd like to send your picture after every capture. Unfortunately, even after you switch this, you'll need to select "Take another picture" from the post-capture menu in order to get the process rolling again. Another annoyance is the inability to set the memory card as a place you'd like to "Take and Send" the picture to.

Photo Album Software Internal (4.5)

The album's default view is a three-item list. Each entry consists of a thumbnail, the title (in a scrolling marquis), and the size of the picture. The downside is only three entries are on screen at once, but scrolling through the list scrolling through the list is also a very fast process. The other view option is thumbnail view, but the pictures take time to load.

There are also a few post-capture editing options, but none of them are for serious users. You can do things like add color effects, frames, or assemble mosaics, but there aren't any options for color correction or red-eye fix. Additionally, while there is a slideshow feature, you can only set the delay interval between slides.

Manual Control (1.0)
The Beat, like most entry-level devices, doesn't have much in the way of manual control. The only thing we'd consider a manual control is the phone's only scene mode: night. For this single nugget of manual goodness, it will receive as many points.

Zoom (1.0)
The phone has digital zoom, which we really argue against even being called a "zoom". What it does is crop and enlarge a section of the picture, which gives the illusion of a zoom at the expense of picture quality. As such, we only award digital zoom a single point.

Focus (0.0)
The Beat has a fixed-focus lens, which we don't award points for.

Flash (0.0)
There's no flash, so you're out of luck as soon as the light dims.

Metering (2.0)
The Beat does technically have a metering option: the brightness slider. There are 11 settings on the slider, but more advanced metering options are non-existent.

White Balance (2.0)
There are four white balance settings in addition to automatic: Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent, and Cloudy.

Image Handling (0.0)
There are two options for image handling that we award points for: renaming the pictures, and protecting them from deletion. You won't find advanced options like color correction or red-eye fix.

Video

Overall Video Score (3.5)
Most cell phones have terrible video capturing capabilities. Entry-level phones are really the dregs of motion capture technology. This being said, the Beat manages to leap over the incredibly low bar we set for it. Its resolution isn't bad, and it will let you limit video for MMS messages. The interface is a bit annoying, however. If you view the video capture feature simply as a bonus tack-on, then you're in the correct frame of mind for enjoying what the Beat has to offer.

Video Resolution (5.52)
Considering how terrible the camera's resolution was, we expected similarly bad results from the Beat's video capture. This plucky little handset surprised us, however, offering average video quality. Its results are actually above average for a phone in its class, but they're still not anything worth watching on anything but a cell phone screen.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Samsung Beat	214.5 / 257.5	5.52
Razr2 V8	168 / 217	3.65
Samsung Blast	107.1 / 129.2	1.38
Samsung SLM	155 / 144	2.23
Motorola W385	N/A: Can't capture video.	0.0
Samsung Juke	N/A: Can't capture video.	0.0

Video Compression (2.0)
The Beat can only capture video in Mpeg-4 format.

Interface (3.5)

We were actually quite surprised to see a full-screen live preview for video capture. Normally phones throw borders and toolbars onto the screen to shrink the size of the preview down to 30% of the total screen. The interface for video capture is actually identical to that of still capture with the exception of the tiny capture icon: it takes on the form of a camcorder instead of a camera. The menu is a bit thinner, due to the absence of burst mode and shooting mode. The interface suffers from problems similar to those we saw in stills capture, however, requiring you to choose "Take another video" from the menu on the post-capture screen.

Manual Control (1.0)
The only manual setting is the brightness slider. Typically video capture sees even fewer manual controls than still capture on cell phones.

Zoom (1.0)
Again, the only zoom you'll see here is digital zoom. Since this degrades the picture quality even further than normal, we really don't recommend using it.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing features.

Modes (2.0)
There is an setting which will limit your videos for MMS messages, but that's it. Many phones don't even give you this courtesy.

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