Samsung i7First Impressions Review

by Richard Baguley
Published on March 21, 2007

Navigation
Intro	Physical Tour
Components	Design / Layout
Modes	Control Options
Image Parameters	Connectivity / Extras
Overall Impressions	Conclusion

Auto Mode

The auto mode of the i7 puts most of the controls into the hands of the camera itself. The user only gets to set the image size, quality, self time, auto focus and flash modes. That should be enough for point and shoot users to get some level of control without having to worry about things like shutter speed or fear overexposure.

 

The i7 records movies at a resolution of 800 x 592, 640 x 480 or 320 x 240. The latter two are at 30 frames per second, while the highest resolution is at 20 frames per second. The videos are stored in the MPEG-4 format, which should provide good image quality and small file sizes. We weren’t able to do any in-depth testing of the video quality, but the short videos we did capture at the PMA show looked to be of good quality. We would have liked to see the device's full resolution video offered at 30fps though.

 

Very basic editing tools are also included in which recorded movies can be trimmed and frames saved as still images. But that’s about it; there is no way to split or remove sections of clips in camera.

Drive/Burst Mode

The i7 can shoot in continuous, auto exposure bracketing modes, but Samsung didn’t supply any details of the number of frames that can be captured per second. Our estimate, from our limited testing, would be a couple of frames per second. The i7 also includes a rather interesting motion capture mode, which will capture an image when it detects movement in the preview. That'll be useful for catching the midnight cookie thief.

 

As you would expect from a device that doubles as a media player, the i7 has a decent playback mode. You can create slideshows with background music, as well as viewing thumbnails of up to 9 images.

 

A decent selection of scene modes are included : Portrait, Children, Self Shot, Food, Café, Firework, surf & Snow, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Landscape, Close-up & Text. A face recognition mode is also included, and this works with both the auto focus and the auto exposure. In this mode, the camera will select a face from the preview and use that for focusing and metering. This can be very useful if you are taking a picture of someone against a bright light (such as the sun or a cloudless sky). They will be correctly focused and metered, not the bright object behind them. We weren’t able to test this extensively, but it did seem to accurately detect and lock onto faces.