Samsung M8910 Pixon12

The basics

On paper at least, Samsung's top touchscreen phones should rock your world, and the Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is no different. As well as packing a dazzling 3.1-inch OLED display, there's 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, a microSD slot for stashing up on tunes and vids, but the pièce de résistance is one of the world's first 12 megapixel camera inside a candybar phone. In other words, it's a Samsung Jet with a bleedin' massive camera bolted on the back. Is that a good or bad thing?

The good

Granted, more megapixels doesn't make a more betterer camera, but the Samsung M8910 Pixon12's snapper is nonetheless fantastic. That's as much down to the stacks of camera lighting settings and the fast shooting rate as it is the highest resolution, but if you've got a big memory card, it's the best cameraphone on the market right now. That OLED screen too is more vivid than the smell of napalm in the morning, and makes video playback a treat, especially since Samsung supports more video formats than fake Man Utd fans do teams.

The bad

Really, our gripes here are the same as those with the Jet: the Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is a dumbphone. The Korean kit wizard continues to shove its TouchWiz UI on top of everything, and while we like being able to slap a Wi-Fi button widget on our homescreen, we spent most of the time looking over the fence into the iPhone's app store, lime with envy. Plus, no 3.5mm audio slot for your own headphones (yup, adapter time), and the camera lens mould is huge - you'll really notice it in your pocket.

The bottom line

We've got to hand it to Samsung: its hardware is rock solid and it's getting ever closer to making your phone an acceptable super sub for a point and shoot. The Samsung M8910 Pixon12 very nearly does, and that'll be enough for some people. Us though? We'd rather take the cheaper Samsung Jet, or you know, one of them smartphone thingies you hear people talking about so you can actually run your own apps.