Samsung M520 Cell Phone Review - Imaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on April 07, 2008 Comment on this |
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Summary
The M520 has a downright terrible camera.
Resolution (0.32)
Today is a red letter day, for the Samsung M520 officially has the lowest resolution out of any phone we've reviewed so far. In fact, its still resolution was lower than many phones' video resolution. Looking at the pictures, we can't say we were surprised. It doesn't take an image analysis program to tell these pictures are blurry.
The end result is we wouldn't recommend using the camera for much. When you do use it, just know you can't expect very good pictures from it.
| Cell Phone | Samsung M520 | Nokia 6555 | T-Mobile Shadow |
| Score | 0.32 | 1.90 | 2.28 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 266.9/200.2 | 675/701 | 741/746 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | Samsung SLM | Razr2 V8 | Sony Ericsson W580i |
| Score | 0.88 | 4.29 | 6.35 |
| lw/ph horizontal/vertical | 444/476 | 982/982 | 1195/960 |
| Image of Resolution Chart (click to view) |  |
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Color (5.45)
Though its resolution may be atrocious, the Samsung M520 isn't half bad at color representation. For the most part, colors will appear to be undersaturated, especially yellows. Reds are slightly exaggerated, and blues towards the green or red end of the spectrum are skewed towards blue. Yellows, reds, and greens will be shifted the most, but the blues are represented well.
| Cell Phone | Samsung M520 | Nokia 6555 | T-Mobile Shadow |
| Score | 5.45 | 2.23 | 2.34 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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| Cell Phone | Samsung SLM | Razr2 V8 | Sony Ericsson W580i |
| Score | 5.45 | 3.41 | 8.08 |
| Color Checker Chart (click to view) |  |
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Noise (1.25)
First of all, no phone handles noise well: our average score in this section is a 1.08. Given this, the M520 performs relatively well. As you can see in the below chart, it beat out its competitors. Does this mean your pictures will be noise free? Far from it. We're just saying that it sucks a little less than some phones out there. Noise in cell phone pictures is just something we'll all have to deal with for a while.
| Cell Phone | Score |
| Samsung M520 | 1.25 |
| Nokia 6555 | 0.21 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 1.23 |
| Samsung SLM | 1.48 |
| Razr2 V8 | 0.91 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 0.36 |
Live Preview (3.0)
The good news is the live preview on the M520 is a fairly accurate portrayal of the final image, and it uses the entire screen. The colors in the final are a bit washed out, but that's really nit-picking. The main problem with the live preview is any type of movement whatsoever. First of all, the image on the camera lags about a quarter second behind what's actually happening. Though this might not seem like much, it's definitely noticeable. Also, even slow movement will cause heavy blurring, meaning it will be difficult to follow a moving target.
Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.88)
Starting with the phone closed and unlocked, we were able to capture a picture in 1.64 seconds. This is ridiculously fast, and due mainly to the phone's insane shutter to shot speed. There is a bit of a catch, however: you will only be able to achieve this time with picture preview on. If picture preview is off, the process will take about 2.11 seconds. This doesn't make any sense, but there you go.| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung M520 | 3.40 | 5.88 |
| Nokia 6555 | 3.70 | 5.41 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 3.20 | 6.25 |
| Samsung SLM | 3.70 | 5.41 |
| Razr2 V8 | 4.56 | 4.39 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 2.70 | 7.41 |
Shot to Shot Time (5.94)
The M520 lacks a burst mode and also can't turn off picture preview, so right away we knew this score would be brutal. It took, on average, 12.81 seconds to get five shots off. This is a meager 0.39 frames per second. The moral of the story: you'd better get your picture right the first time, because it'll be about 2.6 seconds before you can take another one. Action and sports shots are out of the question.
| Cell Phone | FPS | Score |
| Samsung M520 | 0.39 | 1.17 |
| Nokia 6555 | 2.00 | 6.00 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 1.76 | 5.28 |
| Samsung SLM | 2.10 | 6.30 |
| Razr2 V8 | 0.58 | 1.74 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 2.70 | 8.10 |
Shutter to Shot Time (5.56)
Shutter to shot time refers to the short period of time between pressing the button and the actual moment of capture. The M520 didn't have a bad shutter to shot time, only taking 0.36 seconds to snap a shot. At this speed, chances are that whatever was in your live preview will also be in the final frame. Many phones score in the lower half of a second, with a few star performers receiving around a tenth of a second. Conversely, some phones also take several seconds to snap a picture. For a cell phone camera, the M520 shouldn't disappoint.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung M520 | 0.36 | 5.56 |
| Nokia 6555 | 0.40 | 5.00 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 0.90 | 2.22 |
| Samsung SLM | 0.30 | 6.67 |
| Razr2 V8 | 0.39 | 5.13 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 0.12 | 16.67 |
Interface (4.0)
The few options the Samsung M520 gives you are laid out very well. The live preview screen has a few graphics overlaid onto the screen. The top features a small icon describing your shooting mode (either a camera or camcorder), and a bar of your available memory. The center of the screen features a little rectangular targeting reticle. The right side has a bar of icons describing the status of various settings. The bottom displays the two soft key shortcuts, and will let you capture or take you to the options menu.
Photo Album Software Internal (3.0)
Manual Control (2.0)
Most phones have no options that could be considered manual controls. We'll just assign the zero, maybe make a pithy remark, and move on, but -- miracle of miracles -- the M520 actually has a manual feature we're awarding points for: white balance. The M520 has a total of ten different white balance settings between warm and dark, meaning you can adjust the camera for many different lighting situations.
Zoom (0.0)
The M520 doesn't get any points for zoom. It's only zoom option is digital zoom -- which only merits a single point normally -- and the phone won't let you zoom at the highest resolution setting. Since alll digital zoom does is crop and enlarge the picture, which degrades resolution, using it at lower resolutions only exacerbates the already poor quality.
Focus (0.0)
The M520 has a fixed focus lens, meaning what you see is what you get; you can't focus your image further.
Flash (0.0)
You're not going to find a flash on this camera.
Metering (2.0)
The sole option that falls under "metering" is the brightness slider. There are five settings on either side of neutral to either lighten or darken your image.
White Balance (2.0)
The M520 has five preset white balance settings: sunny, cloudy, tungsten, and fluorescent. As mentioned previously, there is also a manual white balance mode, which lets you choose from ten different white balance settings.
Image Handling (0.0)
There are no image handling features, such as cropping or post-capture color correction.
Video
Overall Video Score (4.0)
The SMT5800 is bad at video capture in terms of resolution and overall interface, but it does have some nice options available. There are a ton of potential capture formats, a specific mode to film MMS video, and a bevy of other options for limiting video. You can even adjust the flicker rate at your leisure. Overall, it's a nice video capture program for a cell phone camera, but it is still a cell phone camera. Video Resolution (1.44)
The camera on the SMT5800 is just not very good. Though cell phone video is typically terrible, our tests found the resolution to be 125.6 lw/ph horizontally and 127.9 lw/ph vertically (again, lw/ph means line widths per picture height, and is how our tests measure resolution; an average score would be around 250 lw/ph for each, and an incredible score would be around 400). The video certainly won't be a high quality, but it should be good for viewing on the small screen of a cell phone.
| Cell Phone | lw/ph horizontal/vertical | Score |
| Samsung M520 | 1.44 | 121.4/118.4 |
| Nokia 6555 | 2.97 | 180/165 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 2.59 | 155/168 |
| Samsung SLM | 2.23 | 155/144 |
| Razr2 V8 | 3.65 | 168/217 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 1.32 | 122/108 |
Video Compression (2.0)
The Samsung M520 can only capture to 3GPP2.
Interface (3.5)
The video interface is quite unlike the still picture interface. The live preview doesn't take up the whole screen, with small toolbars eating up a small chunk at the top and bottom. The top will say what the current video quality setting is, and the degree of your digital zoom,.
There's only one menu that pops up, and it has an opaque white background. Really, however, there are only two pertinent options, so you're not likely to open the menu much. The menu will allow you to set a timer for either five or ten seconds, or alter the quality of the video (fine, normal, or economy). If you'd like, you can also choose a color effect, but chances are you won't care to do so.
Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls.
Zoom (1.0)
Digital zoom is the only option, but fortunately it is available on the highest quality setting. That being said, we still wouldn't recommend using it, since it will degrade video quality.
Editing (0.0)
There aren't any video editing options.
Modes (4.0)
There is a mode for limiting the video for MMS messaging, which you'll have to select before the camcorder application even pops up.
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