Samsung Memoir Cell Phone Review - Imaging

With its 8-megapixel sensor, we expected the Memoir to knock the ball completely out of the park in this area, and it did perform very well in our resolution and color tests, though it wasn't leaps and bounds beyond other good camera phones we've seen. We find the camera interface to be a little busy, but the photo album software is decent. Video organization software is bare-bones and there are no video editing features to speak of.

Resolution (14.85)
To evaluate a camera's resolution, we set the phone's camera to its highest quality and resolution settings and then take pictures of an industry-standard resolution chart with it. We then run the resulting images through the Imatest image analysis software. This software analyzes the pictures to measure the point at which black and white lines lose definition and begin to blur into each other, expressed in line widths per picture height (lw/ph) on the horizontal and vertical. As with most things we measure, higher numbers mean better resolution.

We expected top-of-the-line results from the Memoir here with its 8-megapixel camera and it didn't disappoint, though it didn't unseat the previous king of the hill, the Motorola ZINE, as thoroughly as we expected. The ZINE has a 5-megapixel sensor compared to the Memoir's 8-megapixel one, but the difference in their resolution scores isn't as drastic as you'd think - our scoring is tailored to export more from cameras with a higher-megapixel rating. As the experts at our sister site, DigitalCameraInfo.com, tell us, megapixels don't mean everything - it's the size and quality of the sensor that matters more. In a cell phone where space is at a premium already, having a large and high-quality sensor is pretty darned hard, and cell phone cameras are at a distinct disadvantage compared to dedicated digital cameras that don't need to make room for cellular radios, Wi-Fi radios, and a bunch of other stuff. Under these conditions, an 8-megapixel sensor doesn't get you that much more than a 5-megapixel one.

Cell Phone	Samsung Memoir	Nokia N96	LG Dare
Score	14.85	8.81	6.96
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	3264 / 2448	1408 / 1204	1251 / 709
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Motorola ZINE	HTC Touch Diamond	Apple iPhone 3G
Score	13.67	6.54	3.33
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1754 / 1523	1213 / 1214	866 / 897
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (6.83)
We use another industry-standard chart, the GretagMacbeth chart, to evaluate a camera's color accuracy. We take pictures of the chart with the phone's camera and run the resulting images through the Imatest software which then provides data on how closely the camera reproduced the chart's colors. The data comes in the form of 2 charts - the first is a view of the GretagMacbeth chart and gives a visual demonstration of what the camera captured. In this chart, the smallest rectangle shows the actual "correct" color, the largest rectangle shows what the camera captured, and the last interior rectangle shows what the camera should have captured with correction for lighting.

The Memoir's color chart

Above is the Memoir's color chart. It's hard to get a good overall picture of its color performance with this chart, but you can see that, in general, the Memoir didn't capture colors vastly different than the ideal.

Imatest also generates a color error chart to display graphically how accurate the camera was in capturing color. In this chart, the squares indicate what the ideal color capture would be and the circles show how the camera captured that particular color. The line connecting each square and circle represents how accurately the camera captured the color - the longer the line, the less accurate the camera was. The chart also shows the level of saturation for each color captured by the camera - if the circles are closer to the center of the chart than the squares, the camera is capturing under-saturated color. If the squares are closer to the center of the chart than the circles, the camera is capturing over-saturated colors.

The Memoir's color error chart

This chart gives a better overall view of the Memoir's color performance, which earns it one of the best scores among all of the phones we've ever tested. The shorter lines between the circles and the squares show that it wasn't too far off from capturing correct colors. It captures slightly under-saturated greens and yellows, and over-saturated reds and blues. The Memoir earns the best score here again relative to our comparison phones, with the Nokia N96 coming the closest.

Cell Phone	Samsung Memoir	Nokia N96	LG Dare
Score	6.83	6.12	3.77
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Motorola ZINE	HTC Touch Diamond	Apple iPhone 3G
Score	5.61	4.08	3.90
Color Checker Chart

Noise (1.46)
The GretagMacbeth color chart is again the primary tool to evaluate the level of noise in a phone's camera. We use the phone's camera to take pictures of it at various lighting levels ranging from the equivalent of bright daylight down to candle light. Noise is more prevalent in low-light situations since any capturing errors in the image sensor can produce signals greater or less than what is actually present in the image being captured, resulting in graininess and inaccurate color. The resulting images from the various lighting levels are run through the Imatest software, which evaluates noise consistency through the different lighting levels.

Cell phone cameras usually perform pretty poorly in this test - they often lack the settings and image processor capabilities to adjust appropriately in low-light conditions. The Memoir doesn't stand out here at all, joining the our comparison phones with a relatively low score.

Live Preview (7.0)
The Memoir's live preview surprisingly does not take up the entire screen. When you first open the camera application, you see settings options in strips on both sides and a zoom indicator bar across the bottom. All of these disappear after a few moments to allow a view of what you're framing without any distractions, but the menu options leave 2 black strips on each side of the live preview. We'd rather that the live preview take up the entire screen with semi-transparent menu options that still disappear eventually.

The Memoir's live preview

Colors in the live preview appear vivid though there's some blurring with fast motion. Captured images are mostly as you framed them, showing a little more at the bottom than you would expect.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.64)
For those who like to capture spontaneous shots while out and about with their cell phones, we test how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a picture is captured. On the Memoir, the quickest way to open the camera application is to press and hold the shutter button briefly. Once opened, you see a "Please Wait" message at first and then the camera is ready to take pictures. Pressing and releasing the shutter button quickly prompts the lens to focus and then snap a picture right away. In this test, the Memoir took an average of 4.31 seconds, a middle-of-the-road score here among our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (13.41)
To see how quickly a phone's camera can take pictures in quick succession, we time how quickly it can capture 5 shots in a row. If a burst mode is available, we enable this feature, which is possible on the Memoir. However, the Memoir will not auto-focus in this mode, so be prepared for some blurry photos, even if your subject isn't moving very fast. The Memoir posted a phenomenal score in this test, taking 5 photos in 1.11 seconds, which equates to 4.47 frames per second for the highest score among our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (11.66)
To know how quickly the camera's shutter activates, we start a stopwatch the moment we press the shutter button and get the shutter to shot time from the time shown on the stopwatch in the captured image. The Memoir earned another high score here, taking an average of just .17 seconds for an image to be captured after pressing the shutter button, though it's still not quite fast enough to beat the Motorola ZINE here. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (5.5)
The Memoir's camera interface is similar to what you'd find on a dedicated digital camera by Samsung, so you've got a leg up here if you've used one before. With shooting mode, flash, brightness, and other options readily at hand through the shortcuts flanking the live preview, it's easy to make changes to ensure you take the best shot under the current conditions, though it can feel a little busy when you first start using it. Though they disappear after a little while, tapping on the screen will bring them back up again. The only hint that remains on the screen all the time is a small bubble with "Capture" inside it to point you to the shutter button that will naturally fall under your right index finger when holding the Memoir in landscape mode - while this is a cute touch, it would be nice if it would go away since it's pretty easy to remember where the shutter button is after you've had the Memoir for, oh, about 10 seconds.

The still image capture interface

The Memoir's camera interface doesn't get in the way of capturing still images and video too much, but we prefer the more subtle yet still easy-to-use interfaces as found on the Nokia N96 and LG Dare.

Photo Album Software Internal (9.5)
The Memoir's photo album software shows all photos in a thumbnail grid view or a list view, with your online My Album, a direct link to the photo application, and any folders you create showing first at the top. Selecting a photo gives you a few options to send it as a message, via Bluetooth, or as part of an audio postcard, as well as choose to use it as your wallpaper, a MyFave icon, or assign it to a contact.

The photo album thumbnail view

You can show off your pictures in a slide show and you are offered the ability to choose music, the speed, and the transition type when you opt to see one. If you choose to view a photo individually by tapping on it, you can flick right and left on the screen with your finger to scroll through all photos. When you turn the Memoir on its side, it will automatically change the photo's orientation to match, and tilting the phone right or left will allow you to move to the next and previous photos - you can still use your finger to flick right and left, but the tilting feature is cute and nice to show off.

The slide slow creation menu

When viewing an individual photo in portrait orientation, the More button in the bottom right is how you get to the editing functions where you can apply special effects, adjust brightness and other levels, resize, rotate, crop, or flip it, and insert clip art, frames, emoticons, and much more.

The More menu

Overall, the Memoir's photo album software is easy to navigate and offers more editing functions than we typically see in cell phones.

Manual Control (4.0)
We rarely see manual image capture controls in a cell phone, though the Memoir doesn't leave you out in the cold completely here, allowing you to choose between different ISO levels and multiple scene modes. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 are available options. 11 scene modes give you settings for a variety of conditions: Portrait, Landscape, Night, Sports, Party/Indoor, Beach/Snow, Sunset, Dawn, Fall Color, Fireworks, and Backlit.

We'd never expect a cell phone camera to offer the same number of manual controls a dedicated digital point-and-shoot camera would, but the Memoir does very well for itself here, matching the scores of the Motorola ZINE and Nokia N96.

Zoom (1.0)
We had high hopes for the Memoir here when we first heard about it, but optical zoom is not on the list. It is capable of up to 16x digital zoom. We award a single point for digital zoom under our scoring guidelines no matter what the level.

We have one thing to note about controlling the zoom level with the volume buttons. The volume increase button decreases the zoom level and the volume decrease button increases the zoom level. This felt natural to the cameraphiles in the office, but it may feel awkward if you have the functions of these buttons while in phone mode in mind as you take pictures.

Focus (5.0)
The Memoir has an auto-focus lens, as you'd expect of an 8-megapixel camera phone, earning it 5 points in this area. The auto menu setting also allows you to choose between macro and face detection modes.

Flash (8.0)
The Memoir has a Xenon flash, which provides a brighter light than an LED flash. You can set the flash to light automatically only when needed, all the time, or turn it off altogether. The Memoir matches the Motorola ZINE in this area and surpasses all of our other comparison phones with LED flashes or no flash at all, though we would love to see a slow-synchro mode to aid picture-taking in low light situations.

Metering (6.0)
We don't often see cell phones with metering controls, but the Memoir stands out here, offering Matrix, Center-weighted, and Spot metering options. This setting allows you to select how the camera evaluates a scene's lighting to best determine the right exposure level.

White Balance (2.0)
The Memoir offers multiple white balance presets to find the best setting for your current lighting conditions, including Daylight, incandescent, Fluorescent, and Cloudy.

Image Handling (10.0)
Within the photo album software, the Memoir offers an extensive editing menu well beyond what we normally see in cell phones. The first option in the edit menu is the Effects menu where you can apply one of many filters, styles, and warp types, and apply a partial blur. The second option offers multiple adjustments, starting with an automatic level adjustment and then brightness, contrast, and color adjustments dictated by user input through an on-screen slider. The third option, Transform, allows you to resize, rotate, and flip the image. The next menu options let you crop the image, insert frames, another image, clip art, emoticons, or text, and attach a memo to the selected image.

The photo editing menu

Of course, you can always export an image for editing on your computer, but the Memoir offers a great deal on the device itself which makes it even easier to send them on in an email or MMS and earns it the highest score in this area relative to all of our comparison phones.

Video Quality (9.0)
To evaluate video quality, we record a video using the phone's camera and transfer it to a computer to view it on a large screen and compare it to videos of the same scene taken with other cell phones. The Memoir's videos looked very good compared to what we usually see. While it's definitely not the same quality you'd get from a true video camera, it's quite do-able and won't give you a headache to watch.

Video Resolution (13.21)
Using a similar process to the one we use to test resolution in still images, we take a video of the industry-standard resolution chart with the phone's video recorder and run randomly-selected frames of the resulting video file through the Imatest software. Imatest analyzes the pictures to measure the point at which black and white lines lose definition and begin to blur into each other, expressed in line widths per picture height (lw/ph) on the horizontal and vertical. Again, higher numbers mean better resolution here.

The Memoir performs very well here, yielding 358 horizontal line widths per pixel height, and 339 vertical line widths per pixel height. It's in some tough company, though, with the Nokia N96 and the LG Dare not far behind it.

Video Compression (2.0)
The Memoir records video in MPEG4 format, and there is no option to switch to a different format.

Interface (5.5)
The Memoir's camera and video capture interfaces are one and the same - the icon in the top left corner allows you to toggle between these 2 modes. Just as when capturing still images, we find the interface a little too busy when all of the on-screen icons are visible and the silly reminder of where the capture buttons remains on the screen at all times. Aside from this, video capture is easy on the Memoir. Of course, the settings options change when you're in video capture mode, offering fewer items from which to choose, unsurprisingly.

The video capture interface

Manual Control (0.0)
In this area, we consider only controls where you can manually adjust white balance, gain, etc. and the Memoir earns no points here without any such options.

Zoom (1.0)
Zoom works in video capture mode on the Memoir, which is not always the case on all cell phones. It's still only digital zoom, though, and earns the Memoir a single point here.

Editing (0.0)
It's rare that we find video editing functions on a cell phone. Nokia smartphones are usually the exception to this rule, but the N96 let us down in this respect without any of the video editing features present on its predecessor. Regardless, the Memoir is not alone in earning no points in this area since each and every one of our comparison phones also lacked video editing features.

Modes (4.0)
The Memoir has 3 video capture modes: Normal, Picture Messaging, and Slow Motion. In Normal mode, you can capture video a resolutions up to 720 x 480, while Picture Messaging mode limits you to 176 x 144 to ensure the videos you send won't be too large to attach to an MMS. There's a Slow Motion mode as well and we have to say this is not a mode we see often at all.

Video recording modes

There are also effects you can enable to change the look of the videos you record, and these are Black & White, Sepia, Negative, and Water Color. While these effects don't necessarily improve the quality of your videos, they can make them a little different if you're looking to be creative.

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