Samsung S1050 and S850 First Impressions Review

Model Design / Appearance
The Samsung S1050 and S850 have metal housings that come in two traditional colors. The matte black color makes the compact cameras look more like the NV-series than the plainer S-series. The silver color makes the cameras look like every other compact digital camera here at CES. There is a blue ring surrounding the lens barrel and a few chrome highlights that break up the surfaces and enhance the design of the cameras.

Size / Portability
The Samsung S1050 and S850 both measure 3.9 x 2.5 x 1 inches and feel a bit hefty for their relatively small dimensions. These cameras are small enough to fit in a pocket, but might be a little uncomfortable because of the thicker hand grip. The right side of the camera has a protruding metal plate with a small hole in it; this is where the included wrist strap attaches to the camera.

Handling Ability
The Samsung S1050 isn’t flat, but still compact. This makes portability a little more troublesome and handling a bit easier. There is a thicker hand grip that ensures the camera won’t slip out of users’ hands, and the eyelet on the back of the right side doubles as a thumb grip. The biggest hindrance to easy and comfortable handling is the tiny buttons that are the same color as the rest of the camera body, making them difficult to locate quickly.

Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size
Most of the control buttons are found on the right side of the camera’s back. There is a small fin-like zoom control at the top, which users have to push their thumbs into to move. There are tiny circular buttons that have several problems. They are small, ambiguously labeled, and colored the same as the rest of the camera body. There is an “E” button for effects and a “+/-“ button that looks like it is for exposure compensation but accesses the frequently used settings menu. Both cameras also have a playback button and a multi-selector with tiny icons engraved on each direction of the dial. These are hard to see, and the blending colors of the controls and body don’t help. To make things worse, serious force needs to be applied to the multi-selector for it to navigate anywhere in the menus. The Samsung S1050 has one more button than its sidekick: the face detection button. This didn’t work on the pre-production model though.

The mode dial on the top of the camera works much better. When rotated around its positions, a graphic appears on the LCD screen to display a text explanation of the selected mode; this is very helpful.

Menu
The menu system is in a word, confusing. There are just so many menus that it’s hard to remember which button to press for which menu to get to which option. The main menu is found by pushing the Menu/OK button in the center of the multi-selector. It appears as an overlay of the live view, with icons across the top representing the different sub-menus and easy to read text describing the individual options. 

Recording
Sharpness	Soft +, Soft, Normal, Vivid, Vivid +
Contrast	High, Normal, Low
Auto Focus	Center, Multi
OSD Info	Full, Basic
Sound
Volume	Low, Medium, High, Off
Start Sound	Sound 1, Sound 2, Sound 3, Off
Shutter Sound	Sound 1, Sound 2, Sound 3, Off
Beep Sound	Sound 1, Sound 2, Sound 3, Off
Auto Focus Sound	On, Off
Setup 1
File	Reset, Series
Language	English, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Thai, Arabic, Polish, Czech, Turkish, Hungarian, Indonesian
Date & Time	Set date and time
Imprint	Off, Date, Date & Time
LCD	Dark, Normal, Bright
AF Lamp	On, Off
Start Image	Off
Setup 2
Quick View	0.5 sec, 1 sec, 3 sec, Off
Power Off	1 min, 3 min, 5 min, 10 min
LCD Save	On, Off
Video	NTSC, PAL
Format	Yes, No
Reset	Yes, No

Yes, Samsung really spelled “fUN” with a capital “UN.” I think this is another sign that production is still at least a few months down the road. The confusing menus aren’t all bad; there are live views especially in the “+/-“ menu and moving back a page and exiting are easy endeavors. The multi-selector does take a bit of force to push because it is nearly flush with the camera body. Overall, the menus are best avoided.

Ease of Use
Partially because the buttons are so small and ambiguously labeled, the controls blend with the rest of the camera body, and the many menus are not intuitive, the Samsung S1050 is not easy to use.