The situation didn’t change much over the course of the last year; the Finns are keeping the leadership in the segment. A wide variety of 5 Mp products are available from the company’s portfolio, something which the competitors aren’t likely to boast of. LG have been doing well in this direction, currently outpacing Sony Ericsson in this field. The latter suffered a failure with their debut K850i model, and couldn’t sum up the efforts and offer something better on time. Motorola was the last to join the race with their unusual ZN5 model.

Samsung has taken the challenge a bit later than Nokia, though their debut solution instantly proved a success – it was the affordable G600 slider. Next followed a number of interesting solutions, but their flagship didn’t turn out as good as expected. All the ambitions of G800 remained ambitions; there was little practical use in optical zoom so it didn’t contribute much to the popularity. Due to the low sales, Samsung had to redesign the device and issue an updated version, dubbed G810.

Supported networks	GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and WCDMA 2100
GPRS/EDGE	+/+
Operating system	Symbian OS 9.2 (S60 3rd Edition FP1)
Memory	130 Mb
Screen	2,6”, 320х240, 262K
Expansion slot	T-Flash (microSD)
Wireless connectivity	ИК-порт, Bluetooth (2.0), Wi-Fi
GPS / FM	+/+
Camera	5 Mp, auto-focusing
Battery	1200 mAh
Size	103x52,9x17,9 mm
Weight	139.2 g
Guiding price	400 euros

The two models are revealed to have not too much in common: a similar form factor and an optical zoom, the rest of the feature differ to a considerable extent. G810 is the closest alternative to N95. It’s a full-fledged Symbian smartphone with integrated Wi-Fi and GPS, carrying a 3.5 mm standard slot and a 2,6’’ screen. The two are direct competitors, though Nokia released their handset a year ago – it was not until recently that Samsung caught up with them.

СOn the other hand, it’s the first time ever that we deal with such a high level of technology in a Samsung product of this class. The 5 megapixels were an unlikely encounter in Symbian phones by Samsung: in fact, there existed no such thing in the whole portfolio prior to G810. Samsung are currently planning to release a 8 Mp handset ahead of Nokia, battling the Finns on their own field of S60. By August, Samsung will begin shipping i8510; right now it’s time to have a look at their first 5 Mp phone.

Bundling:

- Phone
- Battery
- Charger
- 3.5 mm jack headset
- TV cord
- microUSB cord
- Samsung PC Studio 7 software disk

Design and Ergonomics

Unlike Nokia N95, the Korean alternative utilizes the more common single slider form factor. Hence no dedicated music buttons, ‘specialty controls’ are a thing entirely missing form G810. This also leads to a more reserved appearance as well, helping the product to cover a larger audience. The overall design score is higher than of N95. The latter is entirely made of plastic while G810 sports a few spots plated with metal, which induce an impression of an image product.

Just like G800, the sequel is notable for its massive size, which is a natural feature of all handsets equipped with optical zoom; the size is deemed a factor appealing to a certain part of the male audience. The sole color variant available is a gray metallic. The surface coating endured a month of active usage to end up without a single scratch or worn spot; very much unlike N95, which had some problem on this front. The only spot in G810 is vulnerable to wearing is the glossy OK button in the centre of the navigation block.

G810 feels a bit bulky in the hand, being 17 mm thick at the slimmest spot. The relatively large weight (135 g) also doesn’t do much good to the ergonomics. The face panel elements are poorly arranged. The dial and reject buttons are now stuck together with the keyboard buttons; the menu buttons isn’t set aside from the rest, the navigation button has no backlight. This bunch of misses produce a rather poor impression, Samsung could have invested a bit more effort in improving the device’s ergonomics.

The side edge elements raise no such problems. All the slots are pretty standardized. A 3.5 mm audio jack and a microUSB standard slot are good examples (USB connection charges the phone up). The memory expansion slot allows for hot swapping. The shoot button is two-positioned.

The lack of spring action in the camera lens guard is probably the biggest reason for disappointment. The part feels too wobbly; at times it goes loose because of a lack of fixation. This feels a bit strange as compared to a perfect sliding mechanism, just as they come in Samsung products. The sliding goes all the way smooth and tight. The bottom end of the casing acts as a finger rest.

G810 doesn’t suffer from fingerprints, which is a practical side of the product. The even and bright backlight makes all the key markings perfectly visible in the dark. For a comparison, let’s give you a few sample photos of Nokia N95 and Samsung G800:

Samsung G800:

Camera

The camera is a specialty item of G810. As we have mentioned above, it’s the first 5 Mp Samsung smartphone. It is also the first 5 Mp smartphone which sports optical zoom. A xenon flash and auto-focusing capability are the two other serious advantages. All of this combined makes G810 a unique product. The lens guard is poorly implemented though, it doesn’t get automatically fixed in the extreme positions and isn’t of the spring action kind, rather relying on manual operation. The flash is of an average power, doesn’t feel like a real xenon one, but is still much better than the thing available in G800, which gave all the pictures a bluish tint.

The camera can’t boast of a good performance, so there’s little chance to take a quick shot of something. A full cycle takes 10 seconds, from activating the camera to saving the acquired image. The camera application starts automatically on shifting aside the lens guard, which is handy. The camera application interface is standard for Samsung. A quick menu comprises four functions and is called by pressing the central navigation button. All of the main settings have their icons arranged on a horizontal bar. A few extra settings are available on the last tab.

There 13 Scenes and 5 shooting modes available. The maximum photo resolution is 2560x1920, videos are limited to a maximum of 640x480. Macro and flash can be turned on or off. The flash can function in an auto mode, yet can’t work as a flashlight, being active all the time. A red eye filter option is available. As for the macro mode, the lack of an Auto preset is very annoying. You have to activate the mode manually every time you need it. This feature enjoys a better implementation in Nokia an Sony Ericsson products.

The timer can be set to a delay of 3, 5 or 10 seconds. A reverse progress bar is displayed on the screen during countback, duplicated with a numerical indication. There’s no light indication though, which might have proven useful from a distance. The available special effects are numerous, yet any of these feats can be done in a free graphics editor on the PC. The two traditional effects which are somehow mysteriously missing from the list are Emboss and Sketch.

The standard white balance presets are Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent / Cloudy / Sunset. ISO presets are 50 / 100 / 200 / 400. The viewfinder mode is selectable from Regular / Indicator / Guidelines. The rest of the settings include Quality (Super Fine, Fine, Normal), Exposure meter, Saturation, action sounds, file storage location and default filename pattern. In addition to those, two interesting features are available: FaceID in the portrait shooting mode and image stabilization. Just like G800, the new product has a face auto-capture feature.

The latter is a very specific mode in which an object (presumed to be the person’s face) is captured in a frame which starts moving after the object. It starts off from a white color and grows green or red depending on how successful the current focusing in. The feature works quite all right but can be easily deceived with a photo. The real-life advantage is rather limited, but at times you may find it useful; some shots expose a slight boost in sharpness and accuracy. Here are a few photos taken with maximum quality settings.

Optical zoom in action:

Optical zoom vs digital zoom:

Compared to Nokia N95:

Nokia N95 / Samsung G810

Screen

The screen of G810 is remarkable for its high quality – the image is bright, clear-cut and sports fine view angles. The matrix is close in quality to N95, but suffers from a bad sun-blindness – the screen image fades away in a most terrible manner if struck by direct sunlight.

The Korean handset is equipped with a large (2.6’’) QVGA screen with a 262K color palette. If it weren’t for the sun-blindness, the element would deserve the highest appraisals.

Memory

G810 has only 130 Mb of onboard memory, which is too scarce an amount for a photo flagship; no memory card is supplied inside the sales box. The available microSD slot would accommodate cards up to 2 Gb. Hot swapping is fully supported.

Connectivity

Samsung G810 is a quad-band gadget (GSM900/1800/1900) with EDGE (Class 10) support; it can also function in 3G networks (WCDMA). Accordingly, there’s a frontal VGA cam on the face panel.

Wireless communication is done through Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. The only possible reproach here is the traditional lack of possibility to send and receive Java midlets using this protocol. 3D profiles are supported, yet without hardware acceleration.

Bluetooth options include activation status (on/off), list of active devices, device visibility period, device name and other standard parameters. A wireless A2DP headset worked correctly, though lacked a bit in volume. The following profiles are supported:

• Dial Up Networking Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Generic Access Profile
• Service Discovery Application Profile
• Headset Profile
• Handsfree (Car Kit) Profile
• Generic Object Exchange Profile (OBEX)
• Object Push Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Basic Printing Profile
• Audio Vdieo Remote Control Profile
• Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
• Enhanced Data Rate
• Dual Profile Bluetooth (Voice & Data)
• vNote

Unlike a number of other Samsung models, this one lacks the possibility of transmitting the audio signal to two BT headsets simultaneously, however this can hardly be seen as a serious drawback due to the fact that this feature is rather rarely used.

The wire communication is done through USB 2.0, though the data transfer rate isn’t the highest around. The following connection types are supported: Modem, Mass Storage, Media Player, Printer. The wanted mode can be set as the default connection type in a corresponding menu; the other way is to set an automatic prompt for the desired connection type every time you plug the USB cord in.

The radio block is rather unremarkable; up to 20 stations can be bookmarked; an auto-search feature is available; RDS is missing. To be able to use the radio you have to plug in the headset which acts like antenna. The radio signal is pretty clear, the audio quality of the headset is also quite decent. The integrated speaker is loud enough.

The navigation software utilized in this model is Navigon Mobile Navigator 6.0 (the same one is used in i550/560), ironically enough it doesn’t come in a preinstalled state and is missing from the bundled software disk as well. Where do you get it from, after all? Samsung think you are smart enough to find and download it from the official site. Nokia Maps and Smart2go aren’t supported. A hardly explainable decision which render the product less valuable in terms of its GPS capabilities.

Software platform

The software platform of this handset is nearly identical to the one which is laid in the foundation of many Nokia products, for Samsung made use of licensed technology. There’s little difference from the latest generation of Nokia smartphones, save for a few extra possibilities added by Samsung themselves. It’s the S60 3rd Edition FP1 platform, all the new FP2 products remaining a prerogative of Nokia. Please refer to the following article to find out more facts about the messaging service, contact book, PIM and other functions available on this platform:

Performance

The performance rate of G810 is comparable to N95… there are no apparent differences regardless of a different problem. The solution employs a 330 MHz CPU. Let’s compare Java performance rates of the both: