Samsung Memoir Unofficial Fan Site

Samsung Memoir Review

Samsung has a reputation for producing high-tech phones that are on the cutting edge of current trends. Their newest offering, the Samsung Memoir, is no different. This is a state-of-the-art phone that boasts the ability to replace your current full-sized digital camera. From what Samsung has said, it most definitely has enough features to do this, but until you can get your hands on it, it’s very hard to know, in reality, what you can expect. Is this really the futuristic device they say it is?

Is it going to be a phone that can make your coffee for you and set you up with super-models? Or would you be better off trying to make phone calls using a brick? There’s only one way to find out. We’ve had the very rare opportunity to take a look at this exceptional piece of equipment, and tell you guys exactly what to expect when it comes out. Read this review, and then make your own mind up.

The Samsung Memoir, also known as the SGH-t929, is only being released by T-Mobile. The price has not yet been released, but be expected to pay a good fortune if you don’t get it with a contract. T-Mobile is usually pretty good at discounting phones as long as you sign up for a 2-year service plan however, so as long as you like T-Mobile’s service, you should be able to get it at a decent price. Especially if it can replace your phone AND your digital camera, right?

If you don’t like T-Mobile, you can still purchase Samsung Memoir individually if you have a knack with unlocking these gadgets. It can usually be done in a few minutes with a computer and some basic software, or you can purchase one from a seller on eBay that is already unlocked, though they usually charge a more-than-reasonable fee to do so. Then again, the contract price will likely be so low you’d have to really love your current carrier to not get the discounted price. Unless you have prior bad luck with T-Mobile, or they don’t have good coverage in your part of the word, the best plan-of-attack is probably to just stick with them and get the phone at the cheaper rate.

Samsung Memoir is on sale by the end of Feburary, 2009, so if you’re reading this review after that date, the phone will already be available for you to purchase.

At first glance, Samsung Memoir does not disappoint. It might look a lot like any other phone out there, but it fits in with the current trend. The entire front screen is a touch-screen LCD, with three basic buttons at the bottom. One is a simple function key that can pull up menus, activate specific functions, etc., and the other two are the basic red / green dial / hang-up buttons that almost every cellphone has had since the day they were first invented. In summary, the looks are sleek and appealing, but it doesn’t look all that unique. It resembles every single phone that has been produced since the iPhone came out several years back, and if you want to look unique, you might want to look at a different phone–but there’s definitely nothing wrong with this one’s looks.

Of course, any phone that is marketed as being able to replace a full sized digital camera has got to have the specs to live up to its reputation. The 8-megapixel Samsung Memoir looks, at least at first glance, to be able to do so.

Samsung Memoir camera’s high resolution gets things off to a good start. 8-megapixles rivals the quality of some lower-end digital SLR cameras, that have been designed from the ground up to take professional print-ready pictures. One thing we were slightly let-down about was the lack of an optical zoom. While the camera does advertise up to 16x zoom, it is entirely digital, which is nice–but when the picture size output is 3456 by 2304 pixels, all it’s doing is cropping the image and lowering the resolution, which is something you can do in Photoshop yourself! We found that the digital zoom lacked quality, and each time you press the zoom-in button, the image looked cheaper and cheaper.

Samsung Memoir boasts a battery life that can support up to 5 and a half hours of straight talking before it needs to be recharged. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the chance to see if this is true, but we have no reason to believe they are making stuff up. The stand-by time is up to 300 hours before it needs a charge.

You’re guaranteed to have fast connectivity, since the Samsung Memoir supports 3G connectivity through T-mobile’s network. It also supports every GSM band in existence, so you will have no problem in that department. We were a little sad, however, to see that this phone doesn’t come with Wi-Fi connectivity. That would have pushed this phone over the top to being a small computing device, and not just a souped-up camera phone.

However, Samsung Memoir makes up for lacking Wi-Fi in other areas. This is one of those rare phones that actually comes with GPS! You don’t need an external device or any third-party workarounds to get GPS to work, since it functions straight out of the box. Bluetooth is another feature this phone has, so those space-man headsets will work just fine.

With its strong features and robust touch-screen, the Samsung Memoir is a strong competitor to the Apple iPhone, which seems to be the phone to beat in the present day. If you’re trying to decide between the two, we can’t really offer a lot of advice, since they are designed for two different audiences. However, if you love photography and want a killer camera phone, this is probably the one for you. If you prefer the mobile-computing power and Wi-Fi connectivity of the iPhone, then that’s got to be your best. Once pricing is released, we will know more about how they compare.