Samsung SGH-i450
Posted by bensto in Samsung on 03 29th, 2008
If Compared with the other of Samsung’s U.S. models, the SGH-i450 breaks the company’s slim and silver design. Yes, it’s a slider phone, but it’s somewhat hefty (3.98 inches by 2.05 inches by 0.71 inch; 3.69 ounces) and it sports an eye-catching blue and white color scheme. It’s certainly a nice change and it befits the phone’s multimedia prowess. As we said earlier, it has a dual-slider design that’s similar to the Nokia N95. If you slide the front face up, you’ll expose the numeric keypad. If you slide it down, you’ll see the music touch control.
The SGH-i450 has a bright, vibrant display that supports 262,000 colors and measures 2.4 inches (240×320 pixels). It shows everything well, from text to graphics to photos, and it offers an intuitive Symbian-powered (Series 60) menu interface. You can adjust the brightness, the backlighting time, and the font size.
The SGH-i450 offers two 2-megapixel cameras. The main shooter faces the rear of the phone. It takes pictures in five resolutions, from 1,600×1,200 down to 320×240. Features include a flash, light metering, a digital zoom, a self-timer, a sequence mode, three white balance settings, a brightness control, and four color tones.
read comments (0)Olympus E-3 Digital Camera
Posted by bensto in Olympus on 03 29th, 2008
The E-3’s photos look great. Especially, the colors are gorgeous: saturated, yet some of the most precise we’ve tested in this class (at low ISO sensitivities, at least), with impressive automatic white balance. The camera has a slight tendency to underexpose, but you can easily compensate for that.
The camera disappointingly maxes out at ISO 3,200, but its noise profile looks pretty good; I printed some 11×15 shots taken at ISO 2,000 inside Grand Central Station and found the noise pretty subtle. Nor do Olympus’ noise suppression algorithms overblur.
With the exception of its somewhat awkward design and interface, the Olympus E-3 stands up quite well to competitors such as the Sony Alpha DSLR-A700 and Nikon D300. But if you’re buying into a system, think carefully: Olympus currently offers only 13 pro-quality lenses, and the gap since the last pro dSLR release was about four years. Will that translate into problems for you down the road? Consider it before committing.
