Samsung's second 8MP phone, the Pixon, becomes official

Rival to the LG Renoir hastily unveiled

29 September 2008 18:58 GMT / By Katie Scott

Just this morning, we said it was on the cards - and how right we were.

Samsung has now officially launched its second 8-megapixel camera phone.

Officially named the Pixon (or the M8800), this takes the mantle of the world's slimmest phone with this resolution of camera - a mantle that belonged to the LG KC910 what seems like 5 minutes ago.

In fact - this phone snapper is 13.8mm thick as compared to the LG Renoir which is 13.95mm so positively fat.

Features-wise - you get a 3.2-inch full touchscreen, a 16x digital zoom on the camera as well as autofocus, fast-shutter, smile shot, face detection and geotagging (no mention of a beautifying tool like the Renoir though).

You also get an integrated Photo Browser for easy photo sharing and viewing.

For shooting video, the phone boasts 30fps at resolutions of 720 x 480 and 120fps in QGVA high quality recording mode.

There's no tie-up with DivX or Dolby for this model, unlike LG's baby, but it will play DivX video as well as MPEG4, WMV and XviD files.

Connectivity-wise, the Pixon is a GSM, GPRS, EDGE, quad-band phone, with HSDPA at 7.2Mbps (so the same as the Renoir).

You also get Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0, a TV out connection (same as the Renoir), 200MB of internal memory and compatibility with microSD cards (but will Samsung put an 8GB card in the box like LG?).

Also worth a mention is the fact that the online widgets tool that LG made a fuss about is also available on the Samsung model - so yet another parallel between the two models.

The Samsung Pixon will be available in the UK and Ireland from 1 November 2008.