Score: 8/10 (Great)
Pros Clean design, 4.8-inch screen looks great, incredibly fast, takes great photos, camera software is deep and fun to use. | Cons Horrendous battery life, price is far too high compared to other digital point-and-shoot cameras. |
Nowadays, the cameras on smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, and Nokia Lumia 925, are more than enough to rival many point-and-shoot cameras on the market. Last year, Samsung took the point-and-shoot camera, and turned it on it's head by slapping in a full version of Android Jelly Bean with the Samsung Galaxy Camera. Equipped with a 16MP sensor, 23mm lens, and 21x optical zoom, the Galaxy Camera sounds like a fairly high-end point-and-shoot camera, but it really differentiates itself with a quad-core processor, 4.8-inch 720p HD touchscreen, and the earlier-mentioned Android Jelly Bean. With a starting price of $449 for the Wi-Fi only model though, does the Galaxy Camera truly deserve it's premium price tag? Find out in our full review!
Design/Build Quality
From a design standpoint, the Samsung Galaxy Camera doesn't do anything revolutionary for camera designs, but it does look very clean and neat. On the front of the camera, you will find your large 23mm lens. Next to that, is a nice curved grip, that makes holding the Galaxy Camera feel quite comfortable. On the left-hand side, lies the physical flash button, as well as a small speaker grill which can get covered up quite easily. Up top rests the Camera's flash, power button, camera capture button, zoom control, and microphone. On the right is the Camera's 3.5mm headphone jack, along with a microUSB syncing/charging port. The back of the Camera is home to it's 4.8-inch display, and on the bottom is where you can find the battery holder. The Samsung Galaxy Camera measures in at 5.07 x 2.79 x 0.75 in and weighs in at 10.58 oz. Because of this, the Samsung Galaxy Camera is capable of wearing your hand down if you hold it for a long period of time.
Hardware
As mentioned in the Design/Build Quality section of the review, the Samsung Galaxy Camera houses a 4.8-inch touchscreen on it's back. The display has a resolution of 1280 x 720p HD with 306 ppi, and is a Super Clear LCD screen. Despite it not having a resolution of 1080p Full HD, the screen on the Galaxy Camera still looks fantastic. Images are rich, colors are vibrant, and text is sharp. The display is great for viewing pictures you have taken, or videos you've record with the Camera. All-in-all, I was quite impressed with the display on the Samsung Galaxy Camera.
What's even crazier than the screen on the Galaxy Camera, is it's processing specs. The Samsung Galaxy Camera is packing in a 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos 4412 CPU, along with 1GB of RAM. The Galaxy Camera is one of the few devices here in the US that actually uses Samsung's Exynos chipset, and it certainly does deliver. Although the Quadrant Benchmark score we got is certainly lower than today's flagship devices (with a score of 5930) day-to-day use of the Galaxy Camera was virtually flawless. Swiping through your home screens is as fluid as ever, Web browsing is silky smooth, and I never ran into any real lag when playing graphically intense games, such as Beach Buggy Blitz.
Despite the fancy 720p HD display, and crazy -fast processing speeds, at the end of the day, the Samsung Galaxy Camera is still, well, a camera. The Samsung Galaxy Camera features a 23mm lens that has a 16MP sensor, and 21x optical zoom. So the big question is: How do the pictures look? They look really good. Colors are represented accurately, pictures look sharp, and the optical zoom works great. With that said though, they really don't look a whole lot better than the image quality you can find on smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, and Nokia Lumia 1020.
The same story goes for video quality. While the Galaxy Camera can record 1080p Full HD video that looks pretty good, it just didn't blow me away. The Galaxy Camera adjusted quickly to different lighting situations when recording, and was able to focus in on objects in a rather snappy matter, but it isn't anything we haven't seen before on most of the latest flagship smartphones. Take a look at the video sample above to get a taste for the video recording quality on the Galaxy Camera.
Where the Samsung Galaxy Camera's camera really shines, is in it's software. For casual shutterbugs, Samsung has include an Auto Mode, as well as Smart Mode, which offers different shooting options based on the subject you are taking a picture of (such as Food, Party/Indoor, Snow, Macro, HDR, Fireworks, and more). For all of the professional photographers out there, Samsung has added in Expert Mode. Expert Mode allows you to manually adjust the ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and EV of the Galaxy Camera. While all of these settings are laid out in a very sexy manner, you will have to be familiar with camera lingo to really take advantage of Expert Mode.
Unfortunately, one of my biggest downsides with the Samsung Galaxy Camera is it's battery life. The Galaxy Camera comes equipped with a 1650 mAh removable battery. In my time with the Camera, I was able to get around 4-5 hours of use out of it with moderate picture taking, light Web browsing, and light video streaming. Although I reviewed the Verizon Wireless model with 4G LTE data connections, I relied on Wi-Fi the majority of the time.
Software
The Samsung Galaxy Camera (Verizon Wireless model) comes out of the box running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and is layered with Samsung's Touch Wiz UI. This means you have access to Google Now, customizable home screens, and Google Play's collection of over 700,000 apps. While it will take some time to get used to, Android feels more natural than you would expect on a camera form factor, and runs much smoother than a lot of other Samsung smartphones and tablets.
Along with all of Android's features, Samsung has thrown in some of their own. All of Samsung's apps, including Group Play, S Memo, S Suggest, S Voice, and Paper Artist make their way onto the Galaxy Camera. Even some of Samsung's Motion features, including the ability to pan to browse images, and palm swipe to take a screenshot, find their way into the Galaxy Camera.
Final Verdict
So, who is the Samsung Galaxy Camera for? If you are one of those people who takes a lot of photos, and wants to share them instantly with your friends of Facebook and Instagram, the Galaxy Camera should be a great purchase for you, as long as you don't mind it's premium price. If you are in the market for a camera that is going to capture breath-taking photos though, you are going to want to look elsewhere. The Samsung Galaxy Camera is a very interesting product to say the least. When I first heard about it back in August 2012, I thought it sounded like an incredibly stupid idea. However, after having spent more than 2 weeks with the device, I really do like what Samsung has done with the Galaxy Camera, and can't wait to see what they have in store for it's successor.
DISCLAIMER: Joseph Maring used the Samsung Galaxy Camera for 17 days before beginning to write his review of the device. Verizon Wireless sent us the Galaxy Camera to review, but in no way affected our final score of the gadget.
Author: Joseph Maring
DISCLAIMER: Joseph Maring used the Samsung Galaxy Camera for 17 days before beginning to write his review of the device. Verizon Wireless sent us the Galaxy Camera to review, but in no way affected our final score of the gadget.
Author: Joseph Maring
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