Samsung Pixon 12. A tight squeeze

Written By: Martin on July 8, 2009 One Comment

The Samsung Pixon 12 has a 12 megapixel camera, as you might have guessed. That’s really, really impressive, you might be thinking. You’re wrong. The 12 megapixels stuffed into this thing will not – repeat, will not – work as well as even the 8 megapixels out old Canon digital SLR boasts. Not even close. Not even if you squint. And the reason, as you can ask – if you want – the 21 Malaysian students who a couple of years ago crammed themselves into a Mini, is that when you cram that many things into such a small thing, that small thing doesn’t really work very well.

For Mini, read camera’s light sensor. For Malaysian students, read megapixels. Because like so many things in life, bigger does not always mean better, and so it the case with the Pixon 12. It is not a bad camera at all. In fact, with its autotracking, touch-to-focus, super quick next-shot times and a few other impressive features, it’s a pretty decent cameraphone indeed. But here’s the rub: it’s a cameraphone. Camera… on a phone. And we think that cameras on phones just don’t need to have 12MP. We think the Pixon 12, in fact, might have take images that were every little bit as good if it had an 8MP camera that had had a bit more time spent tweaking. And those files it took with its 8MP would have been a whole lot less ridiculously big than those that the Samsung Pixon 12 does in fact take.

But then, we realise with a world weary sigh, where would the angle have been? Where would the hook for the press / the advertising / the boasting friends have been. If you can’t shout about having more megapixels than anyone else, what can you shout about? Too true, too true. Have a read of this less world weary Samsung Pixon 12 review for a full lowdown on that camera, and the phone’s other stats (not that anyone cares, right?), then have a look at this video: