Samsung Digimax i50

Performance
We didn't expect a lot considering the lackluster performance on the i5. Powering up the i50 took 2 seconds with an additional second for time-to-first shot. Shutting the unit down took approximately 1.2 seconds.

You can shoot thereafter every 3.5 seconds with flash and every 2 seconds without. We disabled picture review on the camera for more accurate results.

The i50 allows you to shoot continuously until your finger tires or when your memory card runs out of capacity at 0.8fps. We managed to snap a total of 48 pictures in a minute on our Imation 1GB SD card. In our tests, the 2.5-inch LCD blacked out during continuous shooting, disabling all forms of preview. It didn't help that there was no optical viewfinder on the camera.

While it took 2 seconds for the i50 to reach its maximum 3x optical zoom from rest, the buzzing noise generated during the action itself was, at best, barely tolerable.

Image Quality
Image quality from the i50 was average. Due to the non-extending nature of the lens, our index finger tended to creep into some of our shots. Shooting in macro allowed us to get as close as 2cm to our subject. The background was appropriately blurred, creating a depth-of-field in our pictures.

Most of our photos were a bit soft and required post-processing on a photo-editing software. There's no form of optical image stabilization on the i50 so most of our night shots had to be discarded due to noise (as a result of higher ISO settings) and blurriness.

There're no equalizer controls, no way of viewing the song files in the SD card and, worst of all, you can't even fast forward a song track. What you do get, however, is Play Mode control and a basic track display. On audio, the i50 had decent-sounding lows, but it's not as solid as we would have liked. Diana Krall's throaty vocals sounded a tad hollow, while treble, though average, was decent enough.

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