Quality headphones

There's no dual-slider like Nokia's N95 design, but the numberpad used on the i8510 is excellent – it's chunky, but there's bags of room and keys are well defined for responsive to the touch tapping.

On the side of the phone, Samsung has included a welcome 3.5mm headphone socket, so you can upgrade to your own standard-headphones should you wish to.

As it is, the supplied set are very good for a mobile in-box set, with a selection of changeable silicone tips so you can get a tight in-ear fit – sound quality is significantly better than most mobile phone buds.

Powerful camera

The camera is certain to be the key feature for many potential i8510 buyers.

The 8-megapixel shooter's lens is protected by an automatic internal sliding cover that flips open or shut when the camera's active. A switch on the side slides between camera, video or playback mode - a user-friendly standalone camera-like touch – and there's a typical camera button in place.

The camera-like back panel of the phone sports a dual-LED flash rather than a more powerful and precise xenon option, so low-light shooting isn't the finest possible quality.

Samsung doesn't go for the big-name lens-maker endorsements, or include a optical zoom like its camera-centric G800. Nonetheless, the i8510 is capable of producing top quality pictures with stunning levels of detail and excellent colour rendition.

Sharper pictures

The autofocus system is narrowly centred so you can get some great, sharply focused compositions; there's an effective macro mode for close ups too, while a blink detector setting is included to cut down on blink-ruined shots. Which seems to work most times.

Anti-shake and Wide Dynamic Range shooting aids are included as well, to counteract hand wobble and difficult lighting conditions. Shot processing is speedy and efficient, with no shutter lag issues, and the interface is not overcomplicated,.

There are a rich array of settings controls to optimise your imaging or adding effects. Multi-shot options include an excellent panorama shooter that uses the motion sensor and onscreen frames to help stitch together continuous shots. Shame it's in low-res VGA quality only.

Impressive video playback

The 8-megapixel image sensor should enable you to print high quality images well above standard photo print sizes, should you wish to, but even on a PC screen you'll notice the fine level of detail you can get with this camera. We found the overall imaging performance among the best we've yet seen from a cameraphone.

Moving images are dealt with pretty well too, shooting at maximum VGA (640x480 pixels) resolution, plus the option to shoot at 120 frames per second so images can be played back in smooth slow motion.

Both still images and video can be uploaded to a wide range of popular websites, blogs and content sharing services – including YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and many more - thanks to the Shozu application that's preloaded.

Video playback is enhanced by DivX video support, and full screen video playback using the RealPlayer app on the 2.8-inch panel is impressive. You can, of course, copy over video files as well as music to this phone from a PC, as well as downloading or streaming clips over the air (using HSDPA or Wi-Fi).

Video calling is also supported – there's a secondary camera for face-to-face calls sitting just above the display.

Competent music player

Plenty of room is available for loading up video or music content. With that iPhone-like 8GB or 16GB storage, plus optional MicroSD card expansion up to 16GB, the i8510 has massive potential as a music and multimedia phone.

The decent quality performance of the music player backs this up; it sounds very pleasant through the supplied earphones, nicely balanced with a good range and depth of sound.