So today begins the Samsung Memoir journey into the T-mobile marketplace. The Memoir really needs no introduction, having been previewed on more than one occassion. So as day breaks and the retail stores open, we take a look at the word on the web, as the Memoir has found itself in the hands of a lucky few.
- Phonedog: Memoir can rightfully claim the title of “Best Cameraphone on a US Carrier” in my book, at least for now. I’m no photographer, but the images I snapped with the device this week came out looking great, and many a point-and-shoot Ansel Adams would do just fine using Memoir as their daily shooter. Still, Memoir the phone leaves something to be desired when pitted head-to-head with the iPhones, BlackBerries, G1s, and Touch Pros (and, soon, Pres) that occupy the same $199 and up price category.
- Engadget: Ultimately, we’re thinking T-Mobile may have painted itself into a corner here. The Behold is a more attractive phone from the same manufacturer featuring the same form factor, the same UI, and the same 3G support; granted, you do lose 3 megapixels, but you’re still left with a totally commendable 5 — and the Memoir’s extra resolution isn’t doing you much good in the way of picture quality anyway.
- Gizmodo: A pretty damn good cameraphone. The TouchWiz UI is pretty much the same as the version on the Samsung Behold. In short, it’s more usable as a touchscreen phone (keyboard is fairly decent) than Windows Mobile phones, but not quite as good as say, Android or the iPhone.
- Boygenius: For $249.99 on a 2-year agreement, we’d have trouble not slapping you if you didn’t pick up the BlackBerry Curve 8900 over this. Didn’t you hear? T-Mobile can’t keep them on the shelves. We highly doubt stockrooms won’t be cozying up the Samsung Memoir, though. It’s not horrible, it just isn’t worth the hassle or the price. At least in our photo scrapbook.
- Mobiletechreview:The Samsung Memoir should be one of the hottest phones of 2009. It has a wonderful touch screen interface courtesy of Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface and the large haptic display. The camera is superb and it’s the fastest autofocus we’ve seen on a high resolution camera phone. The Memoir has a very good web browser by touch screen standards, an excellent on-screen keyboard, an accelerometer and proximity sensor– all the right features to combat iPhoneitus.
- ZDNet: I have only had a few hours to use the device so far, but am pretty impressed with the hardware and find it to be rock solid. The TouchWiz interface is easy to use and I like the customizable widgets. The haptic feedback is helpful and confirms screen presses on the Memoir.
So the general notion here is that opinions are mixed, with reviews of the 8 megapixel camera ranging from impressive to downright disappointment in low light shooting. The touchwiz interface definitely has formed a love hate relationship with the blogging world and the inevitable comparisons to the iPhone, Pre and WM managing to crawl themselves into some of the reviews. The truly disappointing aspect is that a number of bloggers find themselves recommending the Behold still, due to form factor, price and mostly that the only true difference is a 3 megapixel camera bump. Still, we’ll let the end user, the readers decide whether or not this is truly worth picking up and replacing a real point and shoot camera.