he Samsung i7 is much more than just a simple point and shoot digital camera. The feature list is seemingly endless – 7.2 megapixel still camera, personal media player, music centre, camcorder, portable hard drive, text viewer and voice recorder – all in a compact and stylish black metal body. There’s even a glorified travel guide in the form of the World Tour Guide, which provides images and explanations of famous attractions in 30 different countries! The Samsung i7 offers a very innovative way of accessing all of these options. The large 3 inch LCD screen actually rotates through 180 degrees, with different functionality available at each of the 0, 90 and 180 degree settings.

There are some cameras that promise a lot but when you get them home with the curtains drawn, it’s all rather a disappointment. Not so this smooth, dark beauty. For a start, it’s three things in one – camera with 7Mp res and 3x optical zoom, MP3 player and video player. And it comes with a whopping 3in. screen that rotates into three positions that represent each of the functions. And you don’t even have to press the on button – just rotating the screen turns it on automatically. What’s strange is that the MP3 player position also lets you switch into camera mode as well, but considering that the camera zoom and mode buttons are then hidden this is a little strange to have as an option. As it transpires, the camera mode available, when the screen is in MP3 player position, is Auto, with little user ability to change settings. The spirit of interchangeability extends to the .SDC format movie player mode. Press the menu button here and switch to the MP3 player, a text reader or the built-in Tour Guide to 2600 regions in 30 countries. To be honest, this latter item is of very dubious value as it contains little more than one or two sentences, with no pictures or directions.

The 7 mega pixel i7, with 3x optical zoom, has been created for those who want to capture sound, video and photos wherever they are without compromising on feature quality or design. With the LCD in neutral (0 degrees) the user can access SRS quality music files through the integrated MP3 player; and with the LCD rotated to 90 degrees its Portable Multimedia Player (PMP) function; and turned a full 180 degrees, high quality still images and MPEG-4 SVGA quality moving pictures can be taken. On camera editing means that it’s simple to keep the best material and cut unwanted elements without having to wait until you can get access to a computer.