The Samsung HD Icon is recommended for anyone after an excellent camera phone. HD video recording is superb, it can take excellent photos and it's a very capable music player, too.

Samsung HD Icon

At first glance it looks like one of the largest smartphones we've ever reviewed, but although Samsung's HD Icon is tall it’s not especially chunky. Sporting a large 3.7in AMOLED display, the aptly named HD Icon is the first mobile phone in the world to record high-definition 720p video. Also boasting an 8-megapixel camera, a touch screen and running the Symbian OS with Samsung's TouchWIZ interface, the HD Icon is an impressive entertainment device, but not a world beater.

The Samsung HD Icon initially looks like a behemoth, but although it’s tall it's not overly large and it doesn't feel too heavy in your hand. This is largely due to the all-plastic body, with Samsung opting for a gloss black finish with chrome edging. Like most glossy phones, it’s nearly impossible to keep the HD Icon free of smudges and fingerprints.

We aren't a huge fan of the Samsung HD Icon's design. The chrome strip below the display houses the menu and answer/end call buttons and it looks like it's been taken straight off LG's Secret. Additionally, the dotted pattern on the top and bottom doesn’t do this phone justice. The flimsy plastic covers on the USB and headphone ports are also annoying and detract from the overall look and feel.

Once you switch on the Samsung HD Icon you'll quickly forgive these minor blemishes. The 3.7in AMOLED display is simply fantastic, providing rich, vivid colour and excellent brightness. Viewing angles are also superb, though the glossy screen does reflect lighting in an office environment and makes the display hard to see in direct sunlight outdoors. In comparison to the iPhone 3GS display, the HD Icon's screen is noticeably brighter and possesses far better viewing angles.

The Samsung HD Icon features an 8-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash, but its most noteworthy feature is the ability to record 720p HD video. Although it won't replace a standalone video camera, the HD Icon records sharp, crisp video in the MP4 file format at a resolution of 1280x720. Colours are excellent and the quality is noteworthy for a mobile phone, though many of our test videos seemed a little too bright. For still images, the HD Icon is one of the best camera phones on the market and it handles almost anything you throw at it, with the exception of photos taken in low-light conditions — the dual LED flash isn't powerful enough. The camera's speed is also very impressive: it takes just two seconds to start up, there is minimal shutter lag and the camera application feels slick and zippy. The lack of a lens cover is a downside.

The Symbian S60 operating system powers the HD Icon, but it's been tweaked with Samsung's TouchWIZ interface. Used on a range of the latest Samsung mobile phones — including the Windows Mobile powered Omnia Icon — TouchWIZ is widget-based skin that sits on top of the phone’s operating system. The use of widgets may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they work reasonably well. You simply press and drag icons from the panel to the main area to use a particular program or function. The HD Icon's three home screen pages are fully customisable. The widgets aren't labelled in the sidebar, so it's hard to distinguish what many of them do. Additionally, the Facebook and YouTube widgets are merely links to the Web page of each service rather than dedicated apps.

The Samsung's TouchWIZ UI is a highlight of the HD Icon and features a widget-based home screen.

Interface tweaks unique to the HD Icon include the ability to swipe left and right to reveal the main menu and photo contacts application respectively. The screen transition is smooth and the 3D effects feel polished and fast — terms usually not associated with Symbian phones, especially touch-screen handsets.

Although there is a similar version of Symbian used on the Nokia N97, the HD Icon's capacitive touch screen results in a far better user experience. There is minimal lag and it feels like a far more polished smartphone than the N97. There are still some issues: scrolling is a mixed bag (annoyingly following your finger when trying to flick through a list), single and double click inconsistencies remain in various functions, and there is no dedicated Symbian app store, despite the wide range of applications available for the platform.

The interface eye-candy, like the above effect when sliding from the home screen to the main menu, gives the Samsung HD Icon a polished feel.

The Samsung HD Icon smartphone is a capable music player, with a 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio application and a tweaked music player. The music software features large touch buttons that make it easy to navigate. Using the built-in accelerometer, turning the phone to the side allows you to slide through your album covers, similar to Apple's Cover Flow system on the iPhone.

The included Web browser supports Flash and has no problems loading most pages, but typing an address requires too many presses and moving around the page isn't as smooth as we'd have liked. There is no multitouch zooming (you double tap instead).

The Samsung HD Icon's music player has been tweaked from the standard Symbian offering and features large, easy to press buttons on the Now Playing screen.

The Samsung HD Icon is an HSDPA-capable phone and also boasts built-in GPS, a digital compass, Bluetooth with A2DP, USB with a standard micro-USB interface and Wi-Fi. It has 16GB of flash memory, and there is a microSD card slot for extra storage.

Samsung rates the HD Icon's battery life at up to 6.5 hours of talk time and 450 hours of standby time on a 3G network. We managed slightly less than advertised times, but the HD Icon still outperforms the iPhone and the HD video recording and large screen don't have an adverse affect on battery life. The HD Icon will get you comfortably through a day, even with heavy use.