Finally a Point-and-Shoot That Doesn’t Suck.
EDIT: Turns out the W80 sucked after all (well actually it’s alright but had some issues). Multiple reviews said so. I ended up going with a new model Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS2 and it is by far the best point-and-shoot I have ever used. Extremely durable, waterproof and it takes great still photos as well as 720p HD videos!
I’ve been wanting to get a new compact point-and-shoot camera for a while now, but every time I seem to find one I really like, there is always some absent feature that ruins it all. To be fair, I have a pretty lengthy list of required features:
- 10+ Megapixels
- 5x Zoom (although 3x would probably suffice)
- Waterproof to 10+ feet
- Shockproof
- 720p Hidef Video Mode (30fps for fluid videos)
With kids and all the fun to be had in the summer, shockproof and waterproof are must-have features for me that severely limit my choices. The Pentax Optio W60 was nearly a perfect contender but it was not really shockproof and the HD video mode was limited to 15fps, which looks quite choppy.
However, Pentax today announced the Optio W80, which appears to improve on the W60′s few shortcomings. New on the W80 is a 12 Megapixel sensor, shock proof to 3.3 feet, waterproof an extra 3 feet (total 16ft), as well as 720p 30fps movie mode! List price is $299 so I would easily expect to pick it up for $250 or less a month or two after it’s released. I’m curious to see how it fares in the hands of early reviewers….
Samsung “Epix” Failure
I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for candybar smartphones. Sliders are nice and feature-rich, but I prefer a front facing keyboard for the convenience it provides. That’s why I jumped at the chance to try Samsung’s recent WM6.1 Pro candybar, the Epix:
Samsung Epix Product Page
On paper, it has all the makings of a superbly equipped WinMo phone:
- 624MHz CPU
- 256MB ROM / 128MB RAM
- 320×320 Resolution
- 3G HSDPA
- WiFi B/G
- Full GPS Chip
- Optical Mouse (VERY COOL!)
- 2.0 Megapixel Camera, Speakerphone, etc, etc, etc
However, real-world use proves just what an epic fail this phone truly is. I really wanted to love this phone, but it’s flaws proved so extensive, that even with tons of tweaking and hacking, the phone is truly intolerable for everyday use.
Initially, the phone was released with a very buggy set of software, including the following problems that I noticed during daily use:
- No email alerts sounded upon inbound email – missed all sorts of emails…
- No ability to latch to HDSPA 3G – UMTS with about 300kbps was the fastest I ever got.
- LED notifications do not work according to settings
- Notes do not sync with Outlook!
- About once a day the phone starts vibrating and wont stop. The touch screen stops working at the same time. Only way to fix is to pull the battery
- Occasionally, audio stops working – even resets will not bring audio back. Only way to dix is to pull the battery
- Notifications settings are not remembered after a reset or power cycle – have to change alert notifications EVERY TIME
- About 2-3 times a week, a message box appears, stating “Forced SLOG Dump”. This is known in the Epix community as the “dreaded SLOG dump error”. Again, the only way to resolve this is to pull the battery.
- The ascending ringtone is hard-coded. Even selecting a normal ringtone still ascends – lots of missed calls due to this bug
In April 2009, ATT and Samsung released an over the air update, known as the UCI3 update, which addressed some of the above issues, but introduced a new bug that would often lock up the entire phone for 60-90 seconds when placing calls. I didn’t notice this happen to me that often but there were widespread reports this occurrence.
Most recently, in May 2009, Samsung released a new update, the now infamous ID1 update. This was not an over the air update, rather, a downloadable exe file that patches the phone directly via USB. The steps required to complete the update are quite confusing and many users are still unable to fully flash the phone to the new version. However, I was able to successfully update the phone but quickly discovered a major flaw: GPS is completely unusable! In addition to the fact that GPS is broken in the new update, any sort of call to the GPS subsystem results in a hidden process, device.exe, consuming upwards of 80% CPU utilization! Typical CPU usage of device.exe is no more than around 8%. As a result, the battery on the Epix dies within 6-8 hours even when fully charged due to device.exe tasking the CPU.
So here I am, two major updates later, left with a phone that I really WANT to like…but the lack of GPS is a huge shortcoming and unfortunately, I will likely be taking ATT up on their offer to replace my Epix with an HTC FUZE…