Samsung provides a small stylus that can be attached to the phone by a loop, but it's not really needed for most applications.

Handy widgets

In addition, there's a hidden vertical toolbar containing a set of widgets – mini applications and functions - that can be dragged onto the home screen to provide fast access to the particular functions you like having to hand and want to use regularly.

It's easy to use. Finger scroll smoothly up or down through the widgets tool bar to find what you're after, and simply drag and drop onto the main part of the display. The widget stays there until you want to remove it, with easy tap control for its particular functionality.

There's a good choice to hand too. Widgets are available for the music player, FM radio, image viewer, games, calendar, memos, favourite contacts, birthday reminders, calculator, Bluetooth, message inbox, message composer, profiles selector, a mirror function (using the video call camera), and various clock functions.

As well as the regular onboard functions, Samsung has added online widgets – web-based apps including Google Search, Accuweather weather reports, access to Samsung Fun Club content downloads site and a More Widgets download service for finding extra widgets.

Virtual keyboard

Another welcome addition to this touchscreen phone is a virtual Qwerty keyboard. This appears automatically when you tilt the phone sideways while writing text messages, emails, memos, and so on.

It's nice and precise too, allowing you to tap accurately at a reasonable speed. There's the normal phone numberpad-style option when holding the Pixon in portrait mode, plus handwriting recognition as another alternative.

The touch operation system works efficiently and effectively. It's not as immediately smooth and slick as the iPhone's Multi-Touch system, but it's not at all bad compared to other rivals.

User-friendly snapper

The camera action is clearly the focal point for the Pixon though, and its 8-megapixel shooter certainly does the business.

Protected on the back by an automatic-cover, it can be fired up by a press of the side camera button when the screen flips into landscape mode. It has a great user interface – loads of large touch buttons, clearly labelled, make tap control of its extensive options easy and undaunting.

The autofocus system works very crisply, and you can achieve some exceptionally sharp and detailed shots for a mobile phone. Macro close ups can be very impressive too.

The automatic metering system is responsive to changing lighting conditions, though if necessary there's a huge helping of camera settings controls to tweak images to just how you want them. Indoor and low light shooting is good, aided by the twin-LED flash onboard which works pretty well within a couple of metres.

Typical mobile phone colour effects can be added too and there are some multi-shot functions including Samsung's clever motion-sensor aided panorama shooting mode seen on the i8510.

High quality photos

The variety of extra imaging features gives you plenty to work with. As well as the Smile shot and Blink detection modes – which mostly work fine – there's Anti-shake, Wide Dynamic Range option for tricky lighting conditions, ISO, white balance and exposure adjustments, plus a variety of Scenes for different shooting situations.

The high quality results from the camera can be viewed in a flick-through gallery. An additional motion sensor option makes images flow through automatically when you tilt the phone to either side – a novel feature that can turn frustrating as images flow past before you can stop them.

Both still images and video clips can be uploaded to a variety of websites and blogs via the integrated Shozu application. Video shooting quality on the Pixon is good for a mobile, capturing images at VGA (640x480 pixels) or WVGA (720x480) resolution at 30 frames per second for smooth, decent quality footage.