Samsung i8510 Innova

With the Samsung i8510 Innova, the brand breaks all records of elegance and sophistication. The look of the phone is a reason big enough to declare it as the most desirable mobile phone of all times. Unique dimensions of 106.5 x 53.9 x 17.2 mm and a broad TFT of 2.8 inches - the phone looks sensational. It comes with accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate; it also has an optical mouse. With an embedded 8 MP camera with 3264 x 2448 pixels, the laurels of the phone have spread like wildfire in the gizmo world. Features like autofocus, image stabiliser, auto-panorama shot, face, smile, blink detection and VGA video recording at 30 fps and QVGA videos at 120 fps, make it the next man-made wonder. The TV-out port comes to play when you need to watch your clips on a larger screen. The phone is equipped with a GPS receiver and a business card reader. The battery backup of the phone is remarkable with nearly 8 hours and 30 minutes talktime and (approx) 310 hours of standby. The phone is the second perfect piece of this universe, the first being the universe itself.One of the most advanced smartphones that we have ever seen, the Samsung Innov8 (also called the Samsung GT-i8510) is a 3.5G Symbian smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera, WiFi and GPS, plus an advanced multimedia player and a whole host of other features that compete head on with the Nokia N96 and N95 8GB.

Samsung are not well-known for their Symbian devices, but they have been producing them for several years now.. and the Innov8 certainly seems to benefit from Samsung's experience.

We guess that the "8" in "Innov8" refers to the i8510's advanced 8 megapixel camera. This has autofocus and a dual LED flash, plus an image stabiliser, panoramic stitching, face detection and a number of other clever features lifted straight out of Samsung's dedicated digital camera range. Sometimes we have seen disappointing video capture quality with some rival phones, but not so with the Innov8 which is capable of recording VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second, or QVGA resolution at 120 frames per second. The Innov8 also has built-in video editing and an FM radio with RDS, plus stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm audio output socket.
The multimedia player in the Innov8 / GT-i8510 is pretty impressive too, supporting DivX, WMV, MP3, H.263 and H.264 video plus MP3, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, WMA, AMR and RealAudio formats. The large 2.8" QVGA display is one of the largest in its class, and is the same size as the N95 8GB and N96. The Innov8 also has stereo speakers and surround sound. In fact, when it comes to multimedia the only thing that the Innov8 lacks is a digital TV tuner and an FM transmitter.

Internal memory is either 8GB or 16GB (depending on version), usefully this can also be extended by up to 16GB using a compatible microSD card. Most of the competition offers either lots of internal memory or a memory slot, the Samsung Innov8 comes with both.
The Samsung Innov8 supports Advanced GPS (A-GPS) although it isn't clear what mapping applications are available, but Google Maps should work just fine. The GPS automatically geotags pictures taken with the digitalcamera. The built-in accelerometer can automatically switch the Innov8's display orientation. Oh yes, pop the Innov8 on its side and you can use it as a very expensive digital photo frame.

The operating system is the clumsily named Symbian OS V9.3 S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. The Innov8 also comes with two interesting looking 3D games, FIFA 2008 and Asphalt. Of course, there are plenty of Symbian applications around so you can extent the Innov8's capabilities as you wish. Samsung seem to have come up with a pleasingly minimalistic interface too.

Underneath all the other features, the i8510 is a dual-band 900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA device with quand-band GSM, EDGE and GPRS data. It supports WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 connections. The large 1200 mAh battery can power the Samsung Innov8 for up to 5 hours talktime on 3G, 8.5 hours on GSM with around 13-14 days standby time. It's quite a large device at 107 x 54 x 17.2mm.

It isn't the prettiest phone in the work, the looks can perhaps best be described as "purposeful". Overall though, this is an extremely impressive package and in our view the only thing that it could really use is a touchscreen. We understand that the Innov8 / i8510 will start to become available next month in certain markets worldwide. No pricing was specified but we would expect it to cost roughly the same as the Nokia N96 at launch, so expect to pay something in the region of £600 / €750 / $1000 or so when it comes out for a SIM free model.