As we reported earlier, the Memoir is a non-smartphone with a touch-screen interface, 3G Web browsing speeds, and a super-duper camera. During my hands-on time, I focused on checking out the camera.

According to Samsung's Kim Titus, the Memoir is one of Samsung's first phones to use the interface from Samsung's dedicated digital cameras. Kick it into camera mode and turn it sideways, and it feels a lot like a digital camera.

I took a bunch of photos with the Memoir and compared them to shots taken with the Canon PowerShot SD870IS, an 8-megapixel dedicated still camera with excellent image quality. With outdoor shots, you have to zoom in to the pixel level to see any real difference between the two cameras, which is truly impressive. At that level, you see that the Memoir's shots are ever so slightly brighter and less defined than the Canon's - but it's a tough call for an unpracticed eye.

It's easier to tell the difference with indoor shots, because like most cameraphones, the Memoir sometimes takes blurry photos indoors because of very low shutter speeds. The Memoir's Xenon flash is brighter than a standard cameraphone, but nowhere near as bright as the PowerShot's flash. That made it harder to get a sharp photo indoors. The Memoir also had a longer autofocus lag time than the PowerShot, and it has no optical zoom.

The Memoir's camera mode is full of goodies. Face detection focuses on faces even when they aren't in the middle of the frame; it worked great. Blink detection is supposed to wait until a subject has stopped blinking to take a picture; it didn't work so well. The camera has both anti-shake and fill flash modes, which are rare on cameraphones. The Memoir can automatically upload your pics to Flickr, Kodak, Photobucket or Snapfish.

The Memoir's video recording powers are just as impressive as its stills. The camera takes video at 720x480 at up to 25 frames per second, at 640x480 at up to 30 frames per second, and at 320x240 at an astounding 120 frames per second. Each mode took excellent videos, even indoors in artificial light, but there are trade-offs in each mode. At 720x480, some details such as faces looked a little bit blurry and doughy. A relatively slow-moving scene looked great at 640x480, but fast motion got a bit blurry and vertiginous. In 320x240, 120 fps mode, everything was super-smooth. All three modes showed some serious color artifacts on a grid of tight black-and-white horizontal lines. But I'm quibbling; for a cameraphone, this is a huge step forwards. You wouldn't be embarrassed burning this video to DVD.

I can't wait to get the Memoir into our labs and have camera analyst PJ Jacobowitz test it, which will probably happen next week. Keep an eye on PCMag.com for an official review then. See below for some Memoir photos compared to Canon photos.

An outdoor shot taken with the 8-megapixel Canon SD870IS.

An outdoor shot taken with the Samsung Memoir. You really have to zoom in to see major differences from the Canon's shot. This cameraphone takes very good photos indeed.

An indoors, flash shot taken with the Canon SD870IS.

An indoors, flash shot with the Samsung Memoir. The flash is weaker and yellower than the Canon's.