good camera, but GPS and WiFi are almost useless

I had been looking for an upscale digital camera for my mother. The WB850F fulfills these functions quite well: large zoom range, image stabilization, HD video, different programs, continuous panorama shooting, face detection function all quite good. The back of the camera, however, is quite busy with controls, which makes it hard to hold the camera for casual photographers and also may have lead to the accidental release of the video function. The chip has 16 megapixels too ambitious at the small size and achieved in practice hardly this high resolution. Wide angle to 23mm is useful, but at telephoto 450mm is hardly practical to use; a smaller zoom range would have done it.

The biggest difference between this camera and others are GPS and WiFi. I use GPS and WiFi for years with digital SLR cameras. Camera GPS should work so that you can turn on it and then need no longer worry; when the GPS signal is lost time, the system should interpolate. And the basic function of WiFi is that automatically or by pressing a button, all new images will be uploaded. The WB850F meet any of these basic functions reliably. On the WB850F to GPS switches often times from, which means that many photos do not include location information, and WiFi image transfers are limited to 20 images and 10 MByte. Samsung advertises also with an interactive map on the GPS, but this is also cumbersome to set up and of little use.

Overall, the Samsung WB850F is a typical digital travel camera that delivers good quality images. If one disregards the price and GPS / WiFi simply deemed not to exist Camera deserves maybe four stars. But you have to include the price in a vote with and the fact that two features that are exposed by the manufacturer as important, just do not work well. And in that spirit, I can not recommend the WB850F. Compared to the Nikon S9100 (which I also own) I do not see any practical advantages: the WB850F is slightly more expensive, a little harder, and somewhat more complicated to handle. And compared with the Samsung WB750 which WB850F is much more expensive.