Samsung Focus S photos and camera test

The Samsung Focus S has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera. Are they still all they're cracked up to be once you view pictures full-size off that gorgeous Super AMOLED Plus display?

Jessica Dolcourt

Nov. 30, 2011 6:28 p.m. PT

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Killer Windows Phone?

If you think you've seen this design before, you'd be right. It's essentially the Samsung Galaxy S II for AT&T, but in Windows Phone, rather than Android, form. To top it off, the Samsung Focus S may just be the best all-around Windows Phone we've seen.

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Deja vu

It starts with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen with 800x480-pixel resolution (WVGA). (Read the full Samsung Focus S review here.)

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Superslim

It has an 8-megapixel camera on the back, and a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front. (Read the full Samsung Focus S review here.)

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Slim shady

The phone comes in at just over 0.3 inch thick, making it extremely thin. It's also very light. It has 16GB of internal storage and a 1.4GHz processor. (Read the full Samsung Focus S review here.)

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Melt restaurant

The only drawback to the Super AMOLED Plus screen is that it could amplify photos, making them look better on the phone than they do in real life. To test the camera quality, I took photos using default settings (like of this grilled-cheese joint), then transferred pictures to the computer. This outdoor photo, like all these photos, has been resized, but remains otherwise untouched.

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Plant

The Focus S, like many other phones bearing Samsung's 8-megapixel camera, has a tendency to oversaturate some colors, particularly greens and reds. This photo, however, looks pretty true to life in terms of color.

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Sculpture

This photo, taken outdoors in early morning light, was the most disappointing in terms of focus. Results were the same in two separate but successive shots.

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Flowers

The camera took nice shots, but didn't capture the distinct edges as well as I had hoped.

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Flowers, maximum sharpness

I turned the sharpness setting from the default, medium sharpness, to maximum sharpness to achieve a clearer shot that's very good. If you forget to save the settings, the camera returns to the defaults after each tweak.

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High shine

Back on the default settings, medium sharpness was just fine for these metal hookups protruding from a nearby building.

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Window dressing

The camera faithfully captured the yellow here, as well as the fabric's texture.

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Ghosting

Poltergeists must have hopped into this photo, taken indoors with artificial lighting. The CNET "C" doesn't have a habit of emitting any sort of blue light; in fact, the center of the "C" is completely white.

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Toys, medium sharpness

This indoor photo, taken under artificial lighting, shows the phone's default sharpness.

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Toys, high sharpness

Here it is again, with high sharpness selected.

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Toys, maximum sharpness

This time I used the maximum setting.

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Bear

Here's another indoor shot taken with maximum sharpness.

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Front-facing

I also tested out the 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. I came out a little more grayed-out than in real life. (Read the full Samsung Focus S review here.)