Buy Now...

There are two items in this range 'aimed at the younger market' the i7 (slightly more expensive) and the one I have the i70.

It is 8.5x6x2cm when closed. Slide the screen to the left (this adds 3cm to the 8.5cm length) as a simple way to turn it on or off. It weights close to 180grams so the silver grey colour is a metal. When closed only the flash is visible on the face. The right side has a door to cover the solid battery and SD card (no card supplied). The base has the optional tripod screw and proprietary cable insertion point for charging of the solid battery. The rear has only the huge 6.5x3.6cm screen (no case provided). This leaves the top that has three buttons and the microphone.

Open the slider and the wide angle lens appears. This is now a full 4cm from the flash and while this may help is some conditions it is on a level with the lens and in certain situations flash back can still occur. The rear now has eleven touch buttons to control the camera.

There is a small 'Quick Start' sheet enough for all but a total novice to get going. However there is a 120 printed (hooray) manual and to get the best from the camera you certainly need to read it as getting to certain points in the setup is not immediately obvious.

This is really two digital cameras in one as it has normal and wide screen settings for almost all resolutions. It is a 7MP offering 3072x2304, it also offers 5MP 2592x1944, 3MP 2048x1536 and 1MP 1024x768. Now it also has 6MPw 3072x2048, 5MPw 3072x1728, 3MPw 2560x1440 and 1MPw 1280x720. Each can be saved in three different compression modes. So the very limited internal memory can save only a single image at the best resolution.

In movie mode it can be 640x480 or 320x240, either way it's heavy on memory and certain a decent sized SD card or two is required. Keeping my rant about cards and camera cases brief, it needs only one camera manufacturer to be brave to break the large chains insistence to not provide cards and camera cases so they can make more money by providing them at inflated prices.

So briefly it's also a PMP, (portable media player) MP3 player, text viewer (this is very good) voice recorder and or course a data store.

I see looking at their website (final link) that it is available in pink, gold and black as well as the silver grey colour I got. Technically a 7.2MP offering with the now standard 3x optical zoom. It supports face recognition, anti shake, has fourteen scene modes and something called Wise Shot.

Wise Shot means you take two images the first with flash and the second with ASR. You don't need to worry about getting the exact shot twice as both images are taken automatically, compared and you are given the best of both. For more details of this and other items check the excellent Samsung link.

If I have a gripe it's that when taking a portrait image it's very easy to get a finger over the flash.

Doing my Internet searches found the Samsung i70 at a best price of £139.95 from the first link below, this includes delivery and while I show the link to the silver one they do other colours at the same price. However you do need to purchase an SD card (ideally two) and a case. I would suggest two 512MB cards are better than single 1GB

http://www.purelygadgets.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=5717&wysiwyg=7&tduid=1e5a7e9d59b1c6c53fb5be66f7620c78

http://www.samsungcamera.com/product/pro_view.asp?prol_uid=2694&cat_uid=12