Samsung has re-established itself as one of the big players when it comes to camera mobiles with the release of the Samsung Pixon 12. This device is one of the world’s first 12-Megapixel camera, only sharing this acclaim with the Sony Ericsson Satio which is set to be released a few months after the Pixon 12. Also on board are its 3.1-inch AMOLED resistive touch screen, Wi-Fi support, and loads of multimedia features, to name a few. However, this review will focus on the Pixon 12’s unique selling point which is its super powerful snapper. Here’s what to look out for.

The Basics

With such a high Megapixel ratio, the Pixon 12 is able to capture images of up to a maximum of 4000 x 3000 pixels in resolution. The autofocus feature is obviously present, and also two light flash units coming in the form of the regular LED flash and an added special Xenon flash. With these two on board, the Pixon 12 is able to snap photos in the darkest conditions and still come up with photos of the highest quality.

The camera can also capture D1 quality videos (720 x 480) at 30 fps, as well as QVGA videos at an amazing 120 fps.

Feature Overload

The Pixon 12’s camera is loaded with a lot of software features that will help users capture the best shot possible. This includes viewfinder gridlines, blink, smile & face detection, and anti-shake image stabilization. Users can also identify the specific place where the photo was taken via its geo-tagging functionality which is integrated with the Pixon 12’s GPS receiver.

Another handy feature is the Smart auto mode which will automatically select the best settings for a particular shooting condition. This means the camera itself will be adjusting settings such as saturation, color balance, and contrast in order to come up with the optimum scene preset.

What’s New

Other than the Nokia N86 8MP, the Pixon 12 is the only other mobile phone with a camera that has a 28 mm wide-angle lens. For the layman, this translates to around a 20 percent larger view angle when capturing those precious moments.

Another first on the Pixon 12 is a feature called tracking touch focus. What this does is it allows users to focus on a specific subject on the viewfinder by simply holding one’s finger over it. The camera’s crosshairs will automatically focus on this subject and will capture a photo of it. This is quite a handy feature that can be used instead of zooming in on a specific target.