The Samsung Memoir has been rumored to make its way to the nation’s newest 3G network for a very, very long time. Starting today, however, it’s available in all of T-Mobile’s retail stores, online, and over the phone. Samsung’s high-end optics on handsets are nothing new, but an 8 megapixel sensor certainly trumps anything available in the U.S. market (sold by a carrier). In terms of raw specs, you’re looking at T-Mobile 3G support, touch screen with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface (we’ll get into that in a bit), Xenon flash, HTML web browser, A-GPS and nifty photo functions such as smile and face detection along with geo-tagging capabilities.

The feel of the handset is actually great. It’s a combination of metal, soft-touch-finished paint and plastic which all blend together marvelously. The physical design works extremely well as far as not cramping your style no matter how you’re using the phone — web browsing, taking photos, texting — plus, there’s not too much you can do to hide an 8 megapixel sensor.

TouchWiz is a decent attempt at jazzing up a rather poor, old, and horrible operating system that Samsung has made us deal with. You’re given a list of widgets that can be dropped on the home screen for your enjoyment, but we really found this to be a pain in the ass. The home screen offers basically no functionality besides showing the clock and the weather. Everything else is a just a shortcut to another application. If Samsung had copied a little bit of HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, they would have made this at least a little bit more interesting.

Diving into the handset’s OS, you sort of get a dull feeling. Nothing pops out at you and nothing is really interesting. In a world of smartphone operating system battles, even featurephones nowadays need to start stepping it up. Text-based menus really aren’t going to cut it, you know? Like, at least try a little bit for us, ok? The photo section of the phone is probably the most manicured part of the handset, but even that really isn’t saying much. Sure you can swipe to peruse your photos from last night’s drunken stupor, and yes, you can automagically (credit: Gizmodo) upload your pictures to Flickr and T-Mobile MyAlbum service, but we just don’t see the connection here. You know, between a phone and a camera. Especially with an OS so bad and so 1999, it just doesn’t work in our minds. If you really want a decent cameraphone on T-Mobile, we’d completely recommend picking up the Motorola ZN5 over this bad boy, it at least has a decent phone OS that you can work with. The resistive touch screen tech mixed with a pretty bad excuse for an operating system boiled with an 8 megapixel sensor baked with text menus aren’t exactly our cup of tea.

Then there’s also the price-point. For $249.99 on a 2-year agreement, we’d have trouble not slapping you if you didn’t pick up the BlackBerry Curve 8900 over this. Didn’t you hear? T-Mobile can’t keep them on the shelves. We highly doubt stockrooms won’t be cozying up the Samsung Memoir, though. It’s not horrible, it just isn’t worth the hassle or the price. At least in our photo scrapbook.

Click on over to our T-Mobile Samsung Memoir gallery!

T-Mobile has announced that they are going to be carrying the Samsung Memoir this month. We could never have guessed… A pretty little thing, the Memoir’s main selling points are is its 8 megapixel camera with autofocus, 16x digital zoom and Xenon flash. A virtual full-QWERTY keypad and aGPS make up the other goodies this phone offers along with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. Now, the heart and soul of the Memoir is its camera and Samsung has made it easy for users to upload their pics to flickr, Kodak Gallery, Photobucket or Snapfish with the simple tap of the touchscreen. Thankfully this won’t be too much of a chore if you’re within T-Mobile’s funky 1700MHz 3G spectrum, but a lack of WiFi is going to make an awful lot of people sad considering that T-Mobile’s 3G network is currently as widespread as Eminem’s new album. Anyway, we’re quite excited to get some hands-on time with the Memoir — we love us some camera phones. Hit up the jump for a couple more pics and the press release.

SAMSUNG MOBILE AND T-MOBILE USA INTRODUCE BEST-IN-CLASS
8-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA PHONE

Samsung Memoir™ Captures and Shares High-Quality Images
With Advanced Features and Touch Screen

DALLAS, and BELLEVUE, WASH. — Feb. 5, 2009 — Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) and T-Mobile USA, Inc., today announced the upcoming availability of the Samsung Memoir™, a full touch-screen mobile phone equipped with an 8-megapixel camera and premium multimedia features, placing it among the highest quality imaging phones available in the U.S.

The Memoir, available exclusively from T-Mobile, is designed to look and feel like a customer’s current point-and-shoot digital camera. The built-in 8-megapixel camera with Xenon flash, 16x digital zoom and five shooting modes empower customers to capture exceptional photos and videos from their phone — whether they’re on the go, on a vacation or just hanging out around the house.

The touch-screen phone, enabled by Samsung’s TouchWiz™ user interface and powered by T-Mobile’s high-speed 3G network, makes sharing photos easy. Samsung’s new photo widget allows customers to post images taken with the Memoir directly to their favorite online photo sharing source, such as flickr®, Kodak® Gallery, Photobucket and Snapfish.

“With the 8-megapixel Samsung Memoir, T-Mobile customers can capture and share little slices of life in all their vibrant brilliance,” said Denny Marie Post, chief marketing officer, T-Mobile USA. “With the ability to share photos at your fingertips, the Memoir helps make those connections more meaningful by their immediacy.”

The Memoir’s full-touch virtual QWERTY keypad and multiple messaging capabilities, including text, multimedia messaging, instant messaging and e-mail, make staying connected quick and easy while on the go. The Memoir is complete with a music and video player and built-in Assisted GPS navigation, which allows customers to utilize location-based services including turn-by-turn directions. For hands-free use, the Memoir features stereo Bluetooth® technology, speakerphone and voice-activated dialing.

“This is the camera phone that will make people want to leave their digital camera at home,” said Bill Ogle, Chief Marketing Officer for Samsung Mobile. “When you combine the Memoir’s imaging capabilities, customizable menus and music player, not only is it a great phone, but the entertainment possibilities are unlimited.”

Ever since December when Captain Blurrycam struck the 8 megapixel beast that is the Samsung Memoir and provided the first solid evidence that it was US-bound, T-Mobile customers have been eagerly anticipating its arrival. And why wouldn’t they? A full touchscreen, an 8 megapixel camera with auto focus, 16x digital zoom, dual LED flash and 30 fps video recording, alongside a bevy of other camera-centric specs make this one hell of a feature phone for T-Mobile. Word now is that the release date may have been pushed back a bit from the date we scooped back in December, but the good news is that we now have a possible price point – $299.99 with a 2-year contract, pretty steep. We’ve already seen changes made to the release schedule and it’s likely that since the Curve 8900 was pushed up, other handsets would be pushed back. We admit we’re a tad sketched out by the fact that the poster seems very skeptical as to the document’s authenticity, but maybe it’s the mention of a target audience in the 30 – 45 year-old range that has him uneasy. While that does seems a bit silly, don’t put it past a carrier to issue internal documents with expectations like that. As always, only time will tell. Who’s excited?

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Fret not, T-Mobile fans! It appears as though AT&T isn’t going to be the only carrier graced with an 8-megapixel touch screen phone from Samsung. The long rumored T929, or Leica or Memoir or any other name that has been passed through the rumor mill, has just received its blessing from the FCC. How do we know it’s for T-Mobile? Well, slapping a 1700MHz radio into the phone isn’t going to help it on any other US carrier, is it? That’s right, you’ll get to enjoy HSDPA to make your Internet experience a little more bearable with this one. According to the FCC docs, the T929 will also support GPS and Bluetooth as well. No release dates or pricing as of yet, but we’re thinking it should be reasonable with a contract and all that jazz. We’ll be sure to keep you guys posted!

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The Internet has been graced with blurry, less than detailed shots of what appears to be an upcoming 8 megapixel monster from Samsung. We’re not sure if this is going to carry the rumored “Memoir” name, but we’re hearing a lot of references to the T929 Leica, which is a rebradned Pixon that we mentioned not too long ago. Onto more important things, it looks like this will be packing an 8 megapixel camera and a touch screen. So far, there isn’t much to be told but if it’s anything like the Samsung Pixon then it might be a pretty exciting device for TMO folks to look forward to. However, it seems it will be more like the Samsung Behold than anything else, which could be good or bad news depending on your take on the Behold. While it’s been speculated that this handset might be Android-powered, we’re going to keep our reservations about that one since Samsung hasn’t been as vocal as other manufacturers regarding jumping on the Google bandwagon. Hit the jump for an additional pic!

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