Design
Don't be fooled by the glossy marketing photos above; the Samsung INNOV8 is built like a tractor. With its stainless steel trim and keypad, this is the kind of ritzy tractor the Beverly Hillbillies might own, but a workhorse nonetheless.
The INNOV8 is strongly reminiscent of Samsung's U900, another handset that features the hallmarks of attractive phones but fails to be actually alluring. The INNOV8 does include some good design, the 2.8-inch QVGA display seems huge on a handset this size and the keypad features an extra row of keys for dedicated shortcuts, but the colour scheme of varying shades of grey is dull, and the tin battery cover looks like plastic.
While its appearance may inducing yawning, the INNOV8 is an easy handset to use and sports all the ports, plugs and fittings we could hope for on a high-end handset. The right hand side is camera town with a dedicated camera shutter key, the microSD card slot and a switch for navigating between camera and video mode and opening the gallery. The volume / camera zoom rocker is on the opposite side above a 3.5mm headphone socket.
The top half of the slider is almost all screen, with nav keys positioned below. The screen is sharp and clear with great viewing angles, but it isn't as bright as those on other phones and is near impossible to view under sunlight. The standard nav key layout is added to by two extra shortcut buttons and an optical mouse jammed into the middle of the five-way nav button. This mouse takes some getting used to and is sometimes troublesome when moving through the regular menus, but is a godsend when browsing the web.
Features
As with Samsung's Omnia, the INNOV8 is an exercise in squeezing every known piece of mobile technology into a single device. There's the usual suspects; HSDPA data transfers, Wi-Fi, GPS, A2DP stereo Bluetooth and an FM Radio tuner. Then there's the big gun: an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus, LED flash and a huge range of camera settings including face detection.
With storage becoming the new mobile phone battleground, Samsung has loaded the INNOV8 with 16GB internally but also adds the aforementioned microSD card reader, giving the INNOV8 the potential to store 32GB of data with the use of a 16GB card.
While Samsung are busy pitching the INNOV8 as the next big thing in camera phones — and it is this too — we've enjoyed playing with the INNOV8 as our new multimedia player. With all that storage we've been able to transfer an enormous number of songs and numerous large video files to the phone's memory. The INNOV8 supports a wide range of audio and video codecs, notably MP3, AAC WMA and DivX video. In combination with the 3.5mm headphone port and the large screen, the INNOV8 definitely matches Nokia's N96 and out-plays Apple's codec-restrictive iPhone 3G.
Also similar to the Omnia, the INNOV8 is DLNA networking compatible. Once connected to a common Wi-Fi network, the INNOV8 can stream media, like video, to a similarly compatible DLNA device. Samsung are getting right behind DLNA networking and have started featuring the protocol on its latest series of LCD TVs.
Performance
We've drawn several comparisons between Samsung's Omnia and INNOV8 so far in this review, however, performance is where the INNOV8 leaves the Omnia for dead. Nokia's resource-efficient Symbian Series 60 operating platform gives the INNOV8 a huge headstart, and during our tests we experienced only short and infrequent lag spikes. Most menus and apps opened in mere moments.
The 8-megapixel camera is outstanding, on par with LG's Renoir and a few steps ahead of Sony Ericsson's C905. The auto-focus is great and most of our shots have turned out very well, with minimal noise and good clarity. The INNOV8's camera features an 8x digital zoom and is a fair deal better than the digital zooms we see on other camera phones. Colour reproduction is the only area that we have reservations about, as the INNOV8's camera tends to oversaturate images — presumably to overcompensate for weak colour captured to the sensor. This gives the photos a hyper-realistic quality which is not always welcome.
Media playback is likewise excellent with music sounding fantastic and video streaming at what appears to be a constant 30 frames per second. Web browsing is pleasing with the combination of the built-in browser and the INNOV8's optical mouse. Meanwhile, the INNOV8's battery life kept up with all its high-tech gadgetry, managing an average of two days fo activity between charges.
Overall
The INNOV8 is the phone we hoped the Omnia would be, though the Omnia looks and feels the way we'd like the INNOV8 to look and feel. Somewhere between the two is a phone verging on the perfect mobile handset. The INNOV8 has a superb array of features and zippy performance, enough for it to stand out against its nearest competitor in Nokia's N96, though its lackluster design will stuggle to catch the eye of the iPhone crowd. If you're in the market for a high-quality camera phone, 8-megapixel or otherwise, the INNOV8 should be on your shortlist.
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