Gadgetory

struggling to decide whether you want a shiny new phone or a brand new camera but why not combine the two with Samsung's Galaxy K zoom it's a four point eight inch Android phone with a 20 megapixel camera under whopping 10 times optical zoom from the front the K zoom looks like any other galaxy phone it has a crisp white body metallic edging physical home button and the chrome speaker grille turn it around though and a huge camera lens and xenon flash make it indistinguishable from a regular compact digital camera it's lost the awkward battery hum from its predecessor the s4 zoom although it's still a very chunky Beast it's 20 mil thick and it weighs 200 grams making it far more cumbersome and the Galaxy s5 may not be the ideal device for everyday use the Galaxy s5 has one of the best cameras available on a phone so the K zoom has some very big shoes to fill even with its physically larger sensor and higher megapixel account I still found the K zoom shots to be less impressive from the s5s this was mostly due to its auto white balance which aired on the cold side more often than not and a less even exposure and the s5 was able to achieve its trump card comes in the form of a 10 times optical zoom however which lets you focus in on distant objects without losing quality unlike the digital zoom on the s5 which essentially just drops into the picture heavily reducing the quality if you're heading out to sea lions in Africa and don't want to risk losing a limb an optical zoom like this will come in very handy indeed there's a range of scenes and features like panorama and burst shooting while the protegé mode will recommend what it thinks will give the best results for your shot although in my time I didn't find this particularly useful camera stuff aside the K zoom acts just like any other galaxy phone it runs Android 4.4.2 kitkat it's powered by a 1.3 gigahertz quad-core chip with a lower-powered dual-core chip as well to use for less demanding tasks in theory helping save battery the Galaxy K zoom may seem like the photography enthusiasts dream device but it's far from perfect this chunky size makes it very awkward for everyday use and its images are generally less impressive than the Galaxy s5s unless having an optical zoom in your phone is of the utmost importance for some reason you'd be better sticking to a regular phone for your snaps and just taking a good compact camera away when you go on holiday I'm Andrew Hoyle for CNET and this is the Samsung Galaxy KZ