Samsung Memoir T929 T-Mobile

The Samsung Memoir has a virtual QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode.

For texters concerned about the lack of a physical keyboard, the Memoir does have a virtual QWERTY keyboard. After you create a new message, you can tilt the phone horizontally to reveal the landscape QWERTY keyboard that spans the length of the display. The keyboard is roomy and the haptic feedback helps to ensure accurate typing, but it's not quite as smooth as using the iPhone's virtual keyboard. We like that you can type messages with the T9 alphanumeric keypad if you wanted to, and the dedicated punctuation keys are nice (You still have to switch to a different keyboard for symbols and numbers). When in the Web browser, the QWERTY keyboard even has a .com key, which is certainly helpful when entering URLs.

There are three physical keys underneath the display; the Talk, Back, and End/Power keys respectively. The microSD card slot and headset/charger jack are on the left spine. On the right are the camera shutter button, a screen lock key, and the volume rocker that also acts as the camera's zoom controls. On the back is the aforementioned 8-megapixel-camera lens with a built-in retractable lens cover. There's also a Xenon flash, but no self-portrait mirror.

Features
The Samsung Memoir's camera is the primary reason to get this handset, despite the fact the Memoir comes with a whole host of other advanced features. We'll get to that shortly, but first we wanted to let you know a few essentials before we delve into the main course. The Memoir has a large 2,000-entry phone book with room in each entry for four phone numbers, four instant-messaging usernames, a Web site address, birthday and anniversary dates, a street address, and notes. You can save callers to groups, pair them with a photo for caller ID, plus one of 23 polyphonic ringtones.

Other essentials include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, a calendar, a calculator, a notepad, a task list, an alarm clock, a world clock, a timer, a stopwatch, and a currency and unit converter. It also has voice command, PC syncing, Web-based e-mail for a variety of providers (AOL, Yahoo, GMail, Comcast, etc.), instant messaging, GPS support, and stereo Bluetooth. The Memoir is also one of the few phones to support T-Mobile's 3G network. News junkies will also like the built-in RSS reader. Though there's 3G, there is no Wi-Fi, which is quite a disappointment seeing as there's a full HTML browser and photo upload capabilities.

The Samsung Memoir's camera is similar to the Innov8 in terms of features. The 8-megapixel camera can take pictures in up to seven resolutions, from a large 3,264x2,448 to the smallest 320x240. Some of the more typical camera settings include color effects, white balance presets, 8x digital zoom, a self-timer, three quality settings, a mosaic-shot mode, three shutter sounds with silent option, and nine fun frames. You will even find more advanced camera settings like an adjustable ISO and exposure metering.

You also get 12 preset scene settings for certain conditions like portrait, landscape, sports, indoor, beach, sunset, backlight, and more. If you've ever had problems with jerky photos, you'll like the Memoir's antishake mode. Smile-shot helps you to snap a photo only when the people are smiling, and blink detection lets you know when someone has blinked. We've tried both smile and blink detections, and it worked flawlessly. For business travelers, you'll like the ability to use the camera for capturing business cards, so you might never have to carry a bunch of business cards home with you again. There's even a panorama mode that lets you auto-stitch photos after shooting seven photos in quick succession from left to right (or vice versa).

The camcorder is impressive as well. The Memoir can record clips in two resolutions (640x480 and 320x240) in one of three modes: normal mode, picture message mode, and slow-motion video mode. Videos in normal mode are kept for however much storage is on the phone. Picture messages are capped to 30 seconds, and slow-motion video capture is shot at 120 frames per second. The settings are similar to the still camera.

The Samsung Memoir takes really great photos.

Photo quality is simply amazing. We're very impressed by the sharp images, accurate colors, and little to no image noise. After you're done shooting photos, you can store them in the phone or up to a 8GB microSD card. You can also e-mail them, send them to a friend, plus you can upload your photo directly to one of four online sharing sites--Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Photobucket, and Snapfish. You just log into your preferred site, and upload directly from the phone--no need for a special e-mail address or a third-party application like Shozu. We really like this feature, since you do not need to resize your photo down to a more Web-friendly resolution and can instead upload the full original photo if you like. The Memoir also supports geotagging if you want your photos to be tagged with the location where you took the photo.

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