High megapixel counts don't always make for the best cameras. In fact at a time when digital camera makers are concentrating on things other than raw pixel count, mobile phone manufacturers are still trying to beat each other on pixels. So we have the 12-megapixel cameraphone, one example of which is Samsung's Pixon 12.

The phone's camera side actually looks quite like a digital camera, and there is a dedicated button that slides away the lens cover and starts the camera software running without the need to unlock the handset first. This gives you a good chance of getting a point-and-shoot shot in a candid situation. A xenon flash helps in low light conditions and there's also an LED for low light video capture.

Other tweaks include object tracking that seems to work OK if the subject is moving quite slowly. You tap the object you want, it is focussed upon, and then remains in focus as you move the handset around. There is also a panorama mode and a burst mode, but the latter shoots at a resolution of just 640 x 480 which is exceptionally low for any camera phone these days.

There is also the almost inevitable smile shot (the camera waits till your subject is smiling), blink detection (no photos taken if your subject is blinking), and the rather odd beauty mode in which the exposure is automatically adjusted to make people look nicer. Yeah; we know, we know.

As well as the camera options there are some image editing tools that might prove handy. You can draw directly onto photos and use an applet called Photo Eraser to remove bits of an image. It works better on some images than others, but is an interesting extra. Uploading to the likes of Picasa, Flickr and Photobucket is also supported.

The handset is quite large though not too heavy at 107.9 x 53 x 13.8mm and 119g. There is room for a 3.1-inch screen whose AMOLED technology means it is clear and sharp. The 480 x 800 pixels help with clarity of display and the screen rotates as you turn the handset round. There is a widescreen QWERTY keyboard for tapping out text which we found responsive enough as long as we did not try to go too fast.

This is a 3G phone with HSPA to 7.2Mbps download. Wi-Fi is built in, and there is a front-facing camera for two-way video calling. There is 150MB of built-in memory and a microSD card slot for adding more. The headset connector is microUSB but the headset provided is two-piece so you can substitute your favourite headphones easily.

Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, familiar from so many of its handsets, is here. You have three main screens to move between with finger-sweeps, and each can be populated with Widgets drawn from a side menu. You just tap and hold what you want from the menu then drag it onto the screen. There are widgets for controlling music playback, seeing your contacts, having quick access to your calendar, viewing photos, and so on.

Verdict
The camera is a very good performer, but really, if you want this many megapixels you'd be much better off investing in a digital camera and separate mobile phone.

Company: Samsung

Contact: 0845 67267864

Tags: universal serial bus digital camera touchwiz microsd samsung group pixel qwerty samsung