Physical Tour

 **Back**By far the largest feature on the back of the camera is the 3-inch LCD screen. This rotates 90 and 180 degrees for the different modes of the device. Next to the screen are the five control buttons, the top two of which are for the zoom. The middle one kicks off the on-screen menu, and the bottom two control the on-screen display and the playback mode.  The screen has three different positions. With the Samsung logo on the right, the camera is in audio mode. 

 With the screen rotated 90 degrees, the device switches into the PMP (Personal Media Player) mode for playing back videos.**
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***In the media player mode*

 Finally, rotating the screen a further 90 degrees puts it into camera mode. This also shows the labels for the controls on the left side. 

 *In the camera mode* **Left**There are no major features on the left side of the camera.  

 **Right**On the right side of the camera are the headphone socket and the lanyard loop.  

 **Top**The top of the camera is the home of the (from left to right) shutter button, the illuminated power button, and the face detection button. The set of small holes on the far right are for the small speaker.  

 **Bottom**There are three major features on the bottom of the i7: the tripod socket, the cover for the battery and memory card compartment, and the connector for the dock.   

  

Components

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Viewfinder**No viewfinder is present on the i7. The LCD screen provides the live preview for framing and shooting images.  **LCD Screen**The LCD screen is a 3-inch touch screen TFT model with 320,000 pixels. That’s a good deal of resolution; other than Sony's G1 (announced at PMA), it's about as good as LCDs get right now on digital cameras. Images on the screen looked clear, sharp and bright.  **Flash**The flash is located rather close to the lens which raises concern when it comes to red-eye. Samsung quotes the range of the flash at 1 foot to 12.4 feet at the wide setting and 9.1 feet at the telephoto end of the zoom range. That’s a pretty reasonable range, and our limited testing at the PMA show in Vegas indicated that this figure wasn’t inaccurate. The flash did seem to have some power behind it.  

 **Zoom Lens**The 3x Samsung NV zoom lens has a focal length range of 6.3mm to 18.9mm, with a 35mm film equivalent of 38mm to 114 mm. That’s pretty standard, but we would like to see some more at the wide end of the range which would make group shots and landscapes easier.  

 

Design / Layout

 **Model Design/Appearance**The i7 is available in two colors: black or silver. Both look pretty good, highlighting the curved, organic look of the device. The curved front of the camera and grip also help users keep hold of the device when shooting.

Size/PortabilityAt 4 x 2.4 by 0.87 inches, the i7 is a relatively small camera, especially when you consider the size of the LCD screen. And at under 8 ounces, it’s no heavyweight. All of this means that it's a bit larger than some, but it's still small enough to fit easily into a pocket or small bag.  

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Handling Ability**The i7 feels comfortable in the hand, but you really need both hands to use it properly. It is possible to use it with one, but we found that it sometimes slipped when using the zoom control.  **Control Button/Dial Positioning/ Size**The five control buttons on the left side of the back of the i7 are well-sized and easy to use, but they're only part of the story. Most of the controls are accessed through the on-screen menu and controlled with the touch screen. We found the touch screen a little hard to use – it often took several touches to get it to register. Mind you, the model we looked at had been manhandled for the past few days by attendees of the PMA show, so it could be that it was a bit tired of being poked and prodded by hundreds of photo geeks or just wasn't final firmware. Check back for our full review in the coming months for further analysis.   **Menu**The touch screen is the primary interface for the on-screen menu, and the menu looks great, with nice little animations for the buttons zooming in and out, etc. It sounds gimmicky, but it adds a lot to the user experience. You get obvious feedback to show that your button press has been registered. However, moving through the menus does involves a lot of button pressing and getting to options like the ISO setting involved 4 screen touches. Pressing the menu button brings up the shooting mode menu with the following options:

In addition a touch button on the bottom of the screen gives access to the scene mode menu, which includes the following scene modes: Portrait, Children, Self Shot, Food, Café, Firework, surf & Snow, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Landscape, Close-up & Text. 

To access the camera controls, you touch the icons on the side of the screen, which are grouped as follows along with the following options:

Left side

Right side

A number of setup features (such as sounds, etc) and special effects (such as cartoon, etc) can also be accessed through the on-screen Menu/Effects button.** ****Ease Of Use**The menu system of the i7 is intuitively designed, but the touch screen was a problem on the models we looked at; we found ourselves repeatedly poking at the screen until the i7 noticed that we’d been poking it for some time. Hopefully, this won’t be the case with the final products, but we’ll see. Other than that problem, we found the i7 to be a very easy to use device.  

Modes

Auto ModeThe 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.  **Movie Mode**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 ModeThe 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.  **Playback Mode**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.  **Custom Image Presets**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.  

Control Options

 **Manual Control Options**The i7 offers minimal manual control; there is no way to directly set the shutter speed or aperture settings. Users can, however, manually set white balance.    **Focus***Auto Focus*The auto focus on the i7 was pretty responsive. In our limited testing at the PMA show, it generally found the right focus point within about half a second, even when going from a close up to a distant object. We weren’t able to test the low-light capabilities of the focus mechanism, though. For the normal auto focus mode, Samsung claims a focus range of 31 inches to infinity. The i7 does include a nice super macro mode, though, which takes the minimum focus distance down to less than an inch. This is useful if there is an entomologist in the family who wants to record their bug collection.  *Manual Focus*No manual focus is present on the i7; it’s all totally automatic.  **ISO**The ISO range of the i7 is pretty wide, going from 80 to 1600, with stops at 100, 200, 400 and 800 on the way. That’s a wide range for a point-and-shoot, but it remains to be seen how much noise becomes a problem at the upper settings. ** **** ****White Balance**The i7 also has a good range of white balance settings, with a full auto mode, an evaluative mode and 5 presets: Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent_H, Fluorescent_L, Tungsten.  **Exposure**Although there are no true manual settings, you can set exposure compensation of up to 2 stops up or down, with 1/3 of a stop settings on the way. There is no histogram display, though, so the only way to judge how much exposure compensation you may need is to bank on the accuracy of live preview.  **Metering**The three usual metering modes are present: Spot, center weighted, and an overall evaluative mode that uses an unspecified number of spots on the image to gauge exposure. One interesting touch is the Wise Shot mode: this takes two shots sequentially (with just one press of the shutter); one using the advanced shake reduction, and the other using the flash. That way you can pick whichever one looks best. It's a helpful mode for users who are less familiar shooting in low light; it proved to be effective on Fuji's FinePix models.   **Shutter Speed**Although you can’t set it manually, the i7 has a shutter speed range of 1 to 1/2000 of a second. Using the night scene mode increases the longest shutter speed to 16 seconds. That’s a pretty wide range for a point and shoot camera.  **Aperture**Samsung claims an aperture range of f3.5 (at the wide setting) to f4.5 (at the telephoto setting), but didn’t specify a maximum aperture. While the total range is still unknown, the limited max aperture will force users to get into the higher ISO settings more frequently and test the effectiveness of the camera's noise reduction algorithms.  

Image Parameters

 **Picture Quality/ Size Options**Three options are available for capturing images from the 1/2.5-inch CCD sensor: fine, normal and economy. There are a good range of image sizes available: 7 megapixels (3072 x 2304 pixels), 6 megapixels (3072 x 2048 pixels), 5 megapixels with a 3:2 aspect ratio (3072 x 1728 pixels), 5 megapixels (2592 x 1944 pixels), 3 megapixels (2048 x 1536 pixels) and 1 megapixel (1024x768 pixels).  **Picture Effects Mode**We break the picture effects on the i7 into two categories: useful and novelty. On the useful side is the brightness, contrast, saturation, and highlight tools (the latter boosts the contrast in a specified area you draw on the screen). The novelty ones include sticker (which adds cartoonish stickers to images), photo frame (which adds one of a number of hokey-looking photo frames to an image) and cartoon, which creates a cartoon effect in the image. The first set of effects is useful, but the novelty set are best avoided.  

Connectivity / Extras

 **Connectivity***Software*Samsung supplies their Digimax master software with the i7, which is a basic but functional program for downloading, editing and organizing photos. They also supply the Digimax converter program, which converts videos into the XVID MPEG-4 format that the

media player mode of the i7 supports.  *Jacks, plugs, ports*The i7 includes a USB 2.0 connection, plus a switchable NTSC/PAL composite video output. However, both of these are connected through the dock that is supplied with the device, so if you want to use either on the road, you’ll need to take the dock with you. You can’t use a generic USB or A/V cable.  *Direct Print Options*The usual support for DPOF (for flagging images for later printing from the memory card) and PictBridge (for connecting directly to a PictBridge printer) support is included, providing a good number of ways to print an image without a PC.  *

Battery***The i7 uses a 1100 mAh battery, which seems a little small for a device with a large screen like this. Samsung did not supply any information on the expected battery life of the device, but we wouldn’t expect it to be especially long.  *Memory*An impressive 450 MB of internal memory is included, and the i7 supports SD and SDHC cards up to 4GB. Larger cards (which will be available soon) may work, but 4GB is the maximum they guarantee.  **Other Features***MP3 player – The i7 can also work as a digital audio player. However, Samsung only claims support for one audio format: MP3. There is no indication that it will work with the other common audio formats (such as WAV or AAC+), and it isn’t clear if the Digimax converter will be able to convert files from other formats to MP3. Plus, it won’t work with any copy-protected music downloaded from online music stores such as Napster or iTunes. Basic support is provided for plays lists and searching music by artist, album, or title, but it’s not going to replace your iPod. *Video player – The i7 can also work as a video player, and the sample videos on the device looked impressive. The playback was smooth, and color was bright. But again, the player only supports one format: the open source XVID codec. Fortunately, the Digimax converter software does support converting many other video formats to this format and will resize the video to fit the i7 screen. Again, it’s not as flexible or feature-packed as a dedicated media player device, but it would be fine for watching short videos on your daily commute.  *Advanced Shake Reduction* – The i7 includes Samsung’s new ASR (Advanced Shake Reduction) mode, an electronic image stabilization system that boosts the shutter speed and sensitivity to avoid camera shake. *World Travel Guide - *If you happen to find yourself in need of a cup of tea in Thailand, the i7 can help. Like all of Samsung’s new cameras, it features a world travel guide that includes tourist information for 30 countries, such as currencies, maps, and details of tourist attractions. 

Overall Impressions

 **Value**Samsung hasn’t announced US pricing or availability for the i7 yet, but it is priced at around £230 in the UK. That works out to approximately $450 which is on the high side for a 7-megapixel point-and-shoot camera. **Who it’s for***Point-and-Shooters* – Those who just want to take pictures quickly and simply will be overwhelmed by the features that the i7 offers.

Budget Consumers – Although the US pricing on the i7 hasn’t been set, it costs the equivalent of $450 in Europe, and that is rather expensive.
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Gadget Freaks* – There is an undeniable gadget appeal to the i7; gadget freaks will enjoy flipping the screen to and fro for hours.
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Manual Control Freaks* – Pass. There's minimal manual control available, and I doubt that manual control freaks will find the digital media player features a big selling point.
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Pros/Serious Hobbyists* – Pass again, the i7 is not a professional camera by any stretch of the imagination.  

Conclusion

   **Conclusion**The Samsung i7 combines the features of a digital still camera, audio player, and video player into one small, well-designed device. However, it (like most hybrid devices) isn’t that great at any of the tasks it performs. We weren’t able to test the image quality of the camera. It has a pretty good set of features but nothing outstanding. The video and audio player modes are the same. They do the basic tasks, but  the screen is small compared to a dedicated portable video player, and the audio player is nowhere near as easy to use as an iPod. So, the i7 falls in the curious grey area of hybrid devices. It does the job but without much finesse and isn’t as easy to use as a dedicated device. It might be acceptable if you want just one device to occasionally take pictures, occasionally play music, and occasionally watch videos. But you’ll be better off with a dedicated device if you want to do anything more than the most casual shooting.