Samsung Infuse 4G review: Extra legroom

8MP camera has solid quality

The Samsung Infuse 4G comes with an 8MP auto-focus camera for photos of up to 3264 x 2448 pixel resolution. It comes with an LED flash but nothing in the way of lens protection or physical shutter key.

The interface looks pretty familiar with two shortcut bars on each side of the viewfinder. On the right you get the still camera / camcorder switch, virtual shutter key and the gallery shortcut (which is a thumbnail of the last photo taken).

The camera interface

In terms of features, the Samsung Infuse 4G offers pretty much everything – touch focus, scene modes, face/blink/smile detection, effects, geotagging, digital image stabilization and manual controls for ISO, metering mode and so on. There are other features too; we’re just listing the most interesting ones.

The images captured with the 8MP camera of the Infuse 4G are very good – low noise, plenty of fine detail and the color and contrast are good too. Colors are a smidge oversaturated but that’s how we like them. Keep in mind that the camera has a wide-angle lens – our measurements suggest a focal length of about 30mm in 35mm equivalent.

Good HD video

The video camera interface is identical to the still one. It can record video using the front facing camera too (resolution is limited to VGA).

The video camera interface

The 720p videos from the video recorder are nice and smooth.

Here's a 720p video shot by the Infuse 4G.

Connectivity

The Samsung Infuse 4G starts off with the basics – quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and quad-band 3G. There’s HSPA+ with 21Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink too, which AT&T brands as “4G” even though it’s not. The AWS 1700MHz band is missing so even if you get an Infuse 4G unlocked somehow, you won’t get 3G on T-Mobile.

Moving on, there’s Bluetooth 3.0 with High Speed, which promises transfer speeds up to 21Mbps The Wi-Fi support includes a/b/g/n versions, with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band compatibility.

The AllShare app allows you to stream content to and from different kind of devices (TV or computer). We didn’t give it a proper run for its money, but we guess it works over DLNA.

AllShare app

And finally, for wired connectivity we have the MHL port. By all appearances it is a normal microUSB port and works as one (a charger port as well). But the MHL port enables video output by using a MHL-to-HDMI dongle. There is one included in the retail box, which is great since even the Galaxy S2 doesn’t have it in its retail package.

MHL-to-HDMI dongle

Web browser is great

Web browsing is another area where the humongous screen of the Infuse 4G is a great asset. While the interface of the browser has not changed, everything you view in it is bigger and better.

Browsing GSMArena.com on the Samsung Infuse 4G

The browser supports both double tap and pinch zooming along with the new two-finger tilt zoom. There are niceties such as multiple tabs, text reflow, find on page and so on. A neat trick is to pinch zoom out beyond the minimum – that opens up the tabs view.

Page options and settings

Playing HD videos directly in the browser is not the greatest experience. The hardware of the Infuse 4G is obviously not powerful enough to seamlessly support this feature.