Samsung Innov8 Up Close

At the E for All Expo, Samsung showcased gaming on its new flagship smartphone--at least, it's a flagship phone in markets outside of the U.S. The hook for E for All, an entertainment show in Los Angeles over the weekend: the phone is the official one of the World Cyber Games, an event whose finals were being staged at the expo. But the other hook is, as a Symbian S60 3rd edition-based smartphone, the i8510 (as the Innov8 is also called) can play a host of Java-based mobile games--and many were on display at the show.

I enjoyed handling the device for reasons that go beyond gaming. In fact, the first thing I noticed was the phone's camera--a whopping 8 megapixels, with a flash. This blows way past the Nokia N96's 5-megapixel camera, and makes cell phone image capture more viable than ever before (I marvel at how many folks--myself included--will attempt to capture an event on a cell phone cam, knowing full well the image looks like crap if viewed as more than a postage stamp on a PC.) The camera includes autofocus, image stabilization, geotagging (through the handset's built-in GPS) and fancier features like blink, smile, and face detection. Is this a cell phone with a highly functional digicam, or a dedicated digicam with a cell phone built in? That's a question I'll personally ponder after taking the Innov8 for a spin in the real world--but with specs like this, the question certainly seems valid.

Unfortunately, the Innov8 carries an uber-premium price, as does the N96 (Innov8 sells for $700 to $800 at online shops specializing in unlocked imports). What frustrates me is that higher quality cell phone camera technology clearly exists--and has for quite some time--and yet in the U.S. market, anything above a paltry 3 megapixels is rare and added only to top-of-line models that are priced out of reach of the masses. I wonder sometimes, if mobile manufacturers do this in the U.S. for bigger-picture reasons, like concerns for cannibalizing the digicam point-and-shoot market or concerns about privacy and corporate espionage; but I tend to think it's just an outright misstep by mobile handset manufacturers and operators.

The Innov8 felt dreamy in-hand, with its easy-glide slider mechanism, thin and sleek black case, and sharp 2.8-inch QVGA LCD (capable of displaying 16 million colors). Menus were clearly organized and easy to navigate, though at times I found myself wishing the screen operated via touch. Other features include a built-in FM radio and a 3.5mm audio jack; 8GB or 16GB of memory plus a microSD Card slot; assisted GPS; accelerometer; dual-band UMTS/HSDPA and quad-band GSM connectivity; and Wi-Fi with DLNA support.

It may have felt dreamy, but keep dreaming: So far, no announced plans for this phone's release to the U.S. market.