Samsung Tocco Ultra S8300 review

Is the new Samsung Tocco Ultra S8300 up to the task?

The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition
The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition

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When you move onto the camera functions of the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition the device really starts showing off what it does better than pretty much any other cameraphone on the market.

Camera features

Coming with a huge amount of features, such as Smile and Blink Shot and 10 different scene modes, the 8MP camera really is excellent. It also features a dual LED flash which is both bright and emits a fairly good colour, which is impressive from a phone that hasn't gone for a Xenon option.

Among the outstanding features include a customisable Panorama shot, which allows you to stitch together a landscape image of between 3, 4, 5 or 6 shots, with the camera using the built in accelerometer to tell you which way to move the camera to get the best shot.

Here's a 6-frame panorama, and as you can see it's nearly 360 degrees of photo:

We tested the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition against a Samsung P1000 point and shoot compact, which has an optical zoom and a Xenon flash and similar photo taking features, and here's how the two measured up against one another:

Macro with out of shot landscape (Samsung P1000)

Macro with out of shot landscape (Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition)

Using the camera with flash at night (Samsung P1000)

Using the camera with flash at night (Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition)

The same image using night mode to capture - no flash (Samsung P1000)

The same image using night mode to capture - no flash (Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition)

Using the camera to capture fast moving images using sports mode (Samsung P1000)

Using the camera to capture fast moving images using sports mode (Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition)

As you can see, the Tocco Ultra Edition stacks up well against a proper point and shoot camera, creating arguably better shots in a number of difficult conditions.

Here are some images taken to show the versatility of the camera itself:

The camera taking a normal landscape shot

Using the powerful and effective digital zoom to magnify

Low exposure

High Exposure

Browsing the photos was a fairly easy affair, although scrolling through was a bit of a pain as loading each thumbnail seemed to stress the processor a little. The tilting option, which allows you to tilt the phone and watch the photos cascade past, worked fairly well although it was a little inaccurate. It would have been nice to be able to use the up and down key to scroll through but this instead changed the tile view of all your photos, and slowed things down considerably again when trying to look at your newly taken snaps.

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.