Samsung SGH X820 - Camera

The Samsung X820 has a 2 Megapixel digital camera, with a maximum photo resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. The digital camera in the Samsung SGH-X820 is nice if you want to take the occasional snap shot if you are somewhere and want to show it to family and friends. Don't, however, use it on a sports field or any event with quickly flashing pictures, because it won't be much use to you. The Samsung X820's shutter delay is so long that it is practically impossible to photograph moving objects, and another restriction is that you will probably end up with a blurred picture unless you have a steady hand. Unlike the Samsung E900, the Samsung X820 doesn't have a flash, but does have a function that you can activate for taking photos in poor light. I tried it out but cannot really say if it helped much. It is as if the ISO values were raised which means that more noise in the picture than would otherwise have been the case.

Zoom & Effects

SGH-X820 - Zoom & Effects

The Samsung X820's digital camera has 4x digital zoom. A camera was tricky to incorporate in a phone this size. Obviously it would be totally impossible (at least for the moment) to equip it with an optical zoom unless camera modules continue to shrink in size. The camera's standard quality is reasonable, but can't compete with the quality of an average digital photo camera. Digital zooms in a photo camera are generally of a lesser quality, but using the digital zoom in a phone camera like the Samsung X820 is really not a good idea (to put it mildly) The pictures then become really grainy. You can patch the results up a bit with functions that include effects like black-white, negative, sepia, antique and mist. These are nice things to use if you want to send the photo to someone via MMS accompanied by a funny message.

Memory & Connections

SGH-X820 - Memory

With an internal memory of 80MB you can take about 90 average quality photos. Unfortunately, the Samsung SGH-X820's 80MB internal memory cannot be extended with a microSD card or another flash memory card. Writing to and from the Samsung X820's internal memory can be done via the supplied USB cable, Bluetooth, infrared or MMS, so that photos you have taken can be transferred to a computer. You can also print photos saved in the Samsung SGH-X820 via a wireless printer that supports Bluetooth. I transferred 4MB of photos from the telephone to a computer, once with Bluetooth and once via the supplied USB cable; transferring 4MB took almost 3.5 minutes using Bluetooth and the USB cable was a bit quicker at just over 2 minutes. This was also a big improvement on the 3.5 minutes of the Bluetooth connection, but more than 2 minutes is very long if you are waiting.