Samsung Jet S8000 review

Billed as 'better than the iPhone'... but can it even compete?

The Samsung Jet S8000 - is it a budget alternative to the iPhone?
The Samsung Jet S8000 - is it a budget alternative to the iPhone?

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The camera on the Samsung Jet S8000 is a 5MP effort, but with the added beauty of a dual LED. What this means is while colours don't look any more vibrant (the method of producing white LEDs means they are very poor at reproducing a full colour gamut compared to the likes of Xenon) the lighting isn't so harsh, and the shadows are reduced somewhat, which is a good thing obviously.

The sheer variety of scene modes we've been treated to on previous high-end Samsung models are here once again on the Jet S8000, with the likes of night mode, sports, sunset and dawn all giving you a wide variety of options. Of course there's no digital zoom, but you can always put together some lovely panorama shots instead to make yourself feel better, and of course 2GB of internal storage means no more worrying about filling up another memory card.

The samsung jet s8000 camera

The video recording on the Jet S8000, a VGA 30 fps offering (with a 120fps slo-mo mode too) is pretty darned decent, and probably a shade better than the iPhone 3GS (which people have been going a little crazy for if you haven't noticed), with manual or auto exposure adjustment keeping things nice and crisp.

It's not going to take over from a dedicated camcorder, nor does it even hope to be in the same league as the Samsung i8910HD, but for taking a video of your mate trying to leap over a ditch, failing and then slipping up when trying to get out this is perfect.

How our Samsung Jet S8000 camera compares to a fancy Olympus SP-565UZ:

The Samsung Jet S8000 in 'backlight' mode:

The samsung jet s8000

The Olympus SP-565UZ

Olympus sp-565uz

The Samsung Jet S8000 in a low light foreground, bright light background with flash:

The samsung jet s8000

The Olympus SP-565UZ with flash:

Olympus sp-565uz

The Samsung Jet S8000 in sunset mode:

The samsung jet s8000 in sunset mode

The Olympus SP-565UZ

Olympus sp-565uz

The Samsung Jet S8000 in night mode:

Samsung jet s8000

The Olympus SP-565UZ:

Olympus sp-565uz

The Samsung Jet S8000 same shot with flash:

Samsung jet s8000

The Olympus SP-565UZ with flash:

Olympus sp-565uz

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.