Sagem MYX-8

The Sagem MYX-8 mobile phone is a heap of junk. It's not worth a penny! The photo quality is not up to scratch, and the sound recording is just horrible.

Definitely not worth the $500 I paid for it!

In this MYX-8 review I won't go into every single detail of the phone but describe the extras/features that make this phone different from any previous Sagems mainly the phone before this one the MYX-7.

When I first got this phone I was impressed by the aesthetics of the device, after seeing pictures on the net I wasn't so sure weather the phone would look that good but it does! Once you have the phone in your hand and take a good look at it, it really does look nice, especially how the white and aluminium go together to me it is the iPod of the mobile world.

The buttons seem tiny and look difficult to use on pictures of this phone but in reality they aren't the keypad is the most friendly I have used I don't seem to make any mistakes when texting, although the joystick could be slightly improved.

When you first see the screen in action you will be amazed it is the most beautiful screen I have seen on a phone very bright and pictures look amazing on it, you can't even see a pixel on it unless you look really close.

It's nice to see Sagem have added a volume button on the side on this phone, as the other Sagems I've had haven't had one and you had to go through ringtone volume to change the volume.

The menu layout is simple and effective and doesn't change much from previous Sagem phones except for the extra 3 menus audioplayer, connectivity and video. The photo formats you can have with this phone are 320x240/640x480/800x600/1280x960 the bad thing is there isn't an "on request" option so you can choose the format before you take the picture so you have to change the camera settings each time you want to change the res, the pictures do look amazing and when put onto computer you can see the benefits by changing to a higher format.

The video player records for as much memory you have on the phone or until you stop it and videos can be played full screen (you turn the phone sideways) they are good quality as well, a lot better than the myx-7 I had before this phone.

The phone incorporates a miniSD slot to expand your memory which is found my moving the back cover of the phone, it can take a miniSD card of any capacity I have a 512mb in mine which is more than enough for loads of pictures/music/videos, at first with this phone you cannot copy pictures you have taken with phone or videos or music to the miniSD card which is annoying but Sagem have released a flash update to upgrade the firmware of the phone which is available from planetsagem.com id expect all the latest batch of there phones to have this update in though so I would check before you think about flashing it.

After flashing my phone I was able to copy files very quickly to the miniSD and also the camera flash was fixed so that it was possible to turn it off and use it for video recording.

The music player plays any MP3s or any format it supports on your phone, the quality is amazing even on highest volume on loudspeaker the sound is crystal, the headphones allow you to listen to more bass but they aren't very good quality so a good mp3 player would be a better option, organizing music into playlists is strange as you have to keep adding files and saving the playlist rather than just adding and listening also there is no fast forward option or rewind option which could be annoying if you want to just listen to a certain part of a song.

I haven't used the Bluetooth yet with any device so I cannot comment on this. It has a built in game called alive and fearless, it has good music but i find it very difficult to play with how the buttons are setup for it, trying to fire and move at the same time is quite tricky and gets quite frustrating, an auto fire option would make it a lot better like Siberian strike on the myx-7.

The infra-red works fine and I have transferred a few movies and pics to other peoples phones ok with no probs. Photo editing options on this phone are what you tend to find on a lot nowadays you can take a picture in sepia/negative/greyscale and can choose different backlighting for different environments you are in it also has 8x zoom which is really good for looking at something in a distance although the quality of the picture drops the more you zoom in.

After taking the pic you can edit it with zoom/emboss/contrast/sharpen to name a few it is also possible to add little pictures to the picture although some have white pixels around the edge of them and don't look very good when placed on a high quality picture, also there is no add frame on this phone unlike the myx-7.

The Applications are the usual calculator/convertor/alarm/timer/todo/ and applets, which is a new menu for your java applications you install, I haven't tried installing any yet though.

In display options it is possible to get rid of the operator logo which is nice because you can see your wonderful pics with out them being blocked, and also you can choose to have the wallpaper on random so that everytime you go into a menu when you return to the main screen it will have a different background picture.

Conclusion.

I have to say I am very impressed with this phone, with loads of memory, very good screen, stylish, excellent quality of pictures, good video recording, and a whole host of other features this is one of the best phones on the market, and the little things that could be improved are overwhelmed by the good quality of it.