Samsung recently released another truly amazing handset, which they refer to as the Samsung INNOV8 (get it? Innovate?). With the corny name and my resulting desire to hate the phone, I have to admit, they did a pretty amazing job with this phone. The specs are pretty much unprecedented, except for maybe the Sony Ericsson C905.

The INNOV8 boasts a ridiculous 8 megapixel camera, with crazy features that can only be found on high end digital cameras. These include geotagging, automatic panorama shooting, face detection, smile detection, and even blink detection to prevent photos of people blinking (is it just me, or have we come a REALLY long way with camera phones?).

I am not even going to mention all of the phone’s specs, just take any phone out there and the INNOV8 has all its specs. It also has a 16 million color display, stereo speakers, 8 or 16 GB of internal memory plus a Micro SD card slot (so for all you mathematically challenged people, the phone can hold 24 GB of memory with an 8 GB Micro SD card), download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, Stereo Bluetooth, GPS, up to 8.5 hours of talk time, and did I mention an 8 megapixel camera, with a video camera that supports VGA at 30 frames per second and  QVGA at 120 frames per second.

This is all without even mentioning the handset’s great looks. It has a slider form factor, somewhat similar to that of the Nokia N95, only thinner and less toy looking. It really is one of the nicer phones out there.

I recently had a discussion with a friend, who claimed that there is no more room for cellphones to develop. He claimed that they might get faster or smaller, but there are no new ideas or features left to invent in the cellular market. At the time, I argued the point, but after reading about the INNOV8, I think he might just be right. I mean the thing has a freakin business card scanner.

-Hillel