Gadgetory

hey what's up guys I'm Kay PhD here and this is the Samsung Galaxy camera so the easiest way to describe this product is to take a samsung galaxy s3 phone take out the ability to make phone calls which basically gives you a mini tablet then slap on a 16 megapixel camera and lens and a flash and that's how Samsung Galaxy cameras are made now but seriously this guy has gotten quite a bit of attention during the holiday season and I did do an initial hands-on with this guy a few weeks ago but my overall thoughts are still very mixed and here's why first off with the pros it's a pretty decent build quality no doubt about that it feels durable no creaking or anything like that it's also relatively small I'm not going to say it's the smallest digital camera out there but it definitely counts as a portable camera I suppose you could install Skype on it and if you really wanted to you can make calls on it but I don't think most people are going to want to hold this thing up to their ear it's a bit chunky not exactly small enough to be pocketable anyway so this begins to separate itself from other digital cameras thanks to its connectivity this is probably the most connected camera out there right now it's essentially a mini tablet on the back so you can open up the bottom and throw in a SIM card and connect to Wi-Fi and 4G if you want so you can install any app from the Google Play Store this is a really well connected camera it's running Android 4.1 jelly bean so project butter is there and it's just as responsive and fast as you'd expect it to be just like a galaxy s3 the user interface is also the next place it differentiates itself it takes advantage of that four point eight inch Super AMOLED touchscreen on the back very different from most other cameras and that provides a lot of room for control so it gives you just about the same level of control as a regular digital camera so it can take you know full automatic or you can use one of the many smart modes which acts like a preset setting for certain shooting scenarios and most of them work pretty well if you pick correctly and if you're really feeling daring this camera has some full manual modes as well it has an aperture priority mode brightness changing mode a full manual or shutter priority and whichever setting you're in you can use the sliders to basically adjust the camera setting and you can view the preview behind all those sliders in real time so in full manual you can move all these sliders and when you feel like you have that shot dialed in you can just tap out and take your picture as a side note the only issue I had with the speed of the camera was moving from a photo-taking mode to a photo viewing mode sometimes it seemed like it took an extra second to actually do what you asked it to do once you push the button on the screen obviously things can't be instantaneous but that's just something I noticed while I started using it I'm sure this can be fixed also with a software update from Samsung but the biggest drawback of this camera is while the camera itself I gave it to my not so tech-savvy sister to take pictures during the recent holiday so of course it was in full auto indoors and a lot of the shots taken turned out pretty well but the ISO is really only acceptable up to about 1600 from the sensor that you can go up to 6400 if you're ok with the visible noise in the image even though on auto there is no flash you can hit the manual flash pop-up button but beginners won't know this so the shutter speed went all the way down to 1/8 and 1/4 of a second so motional motion blur ends up being a problem with some photos indoors the video quality was also hit or miss it really depends on the light available just like a smartphone there can be a few pros though autofocus was pretty quick during video and for photos as well so the shots were able to be taken pretty quickly and the 21 X optical zoom is nice that can be tremendously useful especially outdoors what's awkward though as a camera is that it takes some microSD cards instead of regular SD cards like a phone so but then again it does have 8 gigabytes of internal storage so it's whatever you want you might not need any cards at all thing is this is supposed to be a camera first but ironically that's where most of its shortcomings are in fact the Galaxy Note 2 went shot for shot for shot for shot with this camera until we broke out that 21 X optical zoom while our phones have to rely on digital zoom but I mean let's face it no other compact camera has a 1.4 gigahertz quad-core processor no other camera has this huge 4.8 inch HD LED touchscreen display on the back no other camera runs Android 4.1 jelly bean and has full access to the Play Store with Instagram and all of its apps and games hardly any other cameras out there are even Wi-Fi capable they're barely Wi-Fi capable and this one is 4G capable and can share photos literally as they are taken to services like Instagram and Dropbox in Gmail and Google Plus that's what makes this a different product but for the price this F two point eight to five point nine lens and a slightly small 16 megapixel sensor and the image and video quality basically that this produces doesn't really match up and I think that's where Samsung kind of swung and missed with this product that being said I have faith in Samsung to get it right on the next release and I am absolutely looking forward to the Samsung Galaxy camera 2 and that's the one I would recommend waiting for