At first glance, the FlipShot looks just like any run-of-the-mill clamshell. Our unit was brushed-metal red with silver accents and the back side houses a lens and flash for the digital camera. The coolest part of the phone is the upper half, which rotates 180 degrees to switch the device into camera-shooting mode. On the right side of the unit are volume controls, which double as the camera’s zoom, and a shutter for snapping pictures. Just below the display, four media navigation buttons glow red and are eerily similar to the buttons on the LG Chocolate.
The metallic keypad is discreet and flat. Each key is surrounded by a small border, so we were able to text and enter numbers easily. We didn’t like the directional navigation pad, though, because its buttons were too close together. Far too often we tried to click OK and instead navigated left or right. Other features and specifications of this Samsung CDMA phone include video player, video recorder, bright and beautiful QVGA color LCD display, built-in microSD memory expansion slot that supports up to 4GB of memory upgrade, Bluetooth, and blasting stereo speakerphone.
On the outside, there's a dim 1.2-inch 128-by-96-pixel LCD that shows an analog clock, and some invisible, touch-sensitive music control buttons. Flip the phone open to find a large, bright, 2.2-inch, 320-by-240-pixel screen and a keypad with keys that are flat but large enough and well separated. The phone's 3-megapixel camera lens is on the back, and there's no lens cover. The microSD card slot is under the back cover, but you don't have to remove the battery to change cards.
The FlipShot's marquee feature, of course, is its camera. To use it, you swivel the screen and flip it back so you're holding the phone just as you would a digital camera: The big screen inside the phone becomes the viewfinder. The camera takes 3MP shots at 2,048-by-1,536 resolution and has real autofocus, but no optical zoom. Notable features include manual ISO up to 400 and a macro mode. The camcorder mode records 320-by-240 videos at 15 frames per second, but footage is troubled by a visual pulsing common in camera-phone video modes. You can save your photos and videos on microSD cards, and both a Kingston 4GB and SanDisk 8GB card worked fine.