Gadgetory

is it a phone or is it a camera it's the same old question and we are trying to answer that in our full review of the Samsung Galaxy K zoom coming to you right now not before telling you that this intro footage has been shot with the Galaxy K zoom let's go check it out maybe this year Samsung realized that it makes absolutely no sense to abuse the name of the galaxy s5 flagship and despite everyone was expecting a galaxy s5 zoom we've got the galaxy k zoom despite being larger than its predecessor in all measurements it definitely feels smaller in the hand you may lead to the omission of a camera grip present on last year's model also gone is the tripod mount and the battery is no longer a slide it in from the side one but a situated below a plastic battery cover which utilizes the same texture found on the s5 oh and the ring around the lens is gone as well at 200 grams this is not a light device couple that put its bulky form factor and you've got yourself a pretty uncomfortable device to carry around in your pocket but it's not all that bad at least it feels good in the hand well as good as any other Samsung phone you'll find on the market and the back texture is miles better than last year's hyper glaze in terms of specs samsung has made improvements over the s4 zoom in almost every aspect we've got a 4.8 inch Super AMOLED screen which is now 720p and looks as good as any other recent Samsung panel with vibrant colors and deep blacks of course the physical home button is found underneath it flanked by a multitasking and back button to its sides sadly just like last year a notification LED is still missing and Samsung doesn't really allow you to use neither the flash nor the focus assist light for that purpose the rest of the front is business as usual with the earpiece sensors and a 2 megapixel front facing each Samsung lens we'll talk more about that in our dedicated camera section later in our review for now we'll just mention that the megapixel count has been up to 20 point 7 while the optical image stabilization and and times optical zoom have been kept at least in terms of numbers on paper you still have a xenon flash to have brighten up things and it focuses this light for darker scenes an exodus 50 to 60 SOC is powering the device which is a hexa core chip meaning it has six cores there's a quad-core 1.3 gigahertz cortex a7 structure and a dual-core 1.7 gigahertz cortex a15 system the 2 gigabytes of memory ensure that everything runs smoothly and the bare minimum of eight gigabytes internal storage out of which very little is available to the user around five gigs ensure that you have to go out and buy a microSD card to expand it you will need it the usual suspects include the sensors accelerometer gyro sensor geomagnetic sensor light sensor proximity sensor as well as the NFC Bluetooth 4.0 Wi-Fi GPS and radio supporting 4G LTE depending on your market and frequencies a 2430 milliamp power battery and Android 4.4.2 powers everything but you won't find galaxy s5 specific features like waterproof construction heartbreak monitor or a fingerprint scanner multi window air gestures and s health are also missing from the software side on top of Android 4.4.2 the K zoom is running the same version of TouchWiz that you'll find on 2014 Samsung phones including the galaxy s5 hence the entire experience is comparable - the software and hardware emissions we mentioned earlier and if you want to know more about that we invite you to check out our in-depth galaxy s5 review software section long story short the UI is somewhat cleaner with samsung's new rounded shortcut icons in the notification tray as well as the settings menu which is now organized under vertical categories and is searchable small bits like displaying the last time you've talked to the person you're currently dialing and 2 bucks for a facebook chat head like always visible floating shortcut menu are all useful additions to the user experience if you're buying this phone you're most likely doing so because of the camera which is after all its main selling point we snapped a lot of pictures during our time with the K zoom under different circumstances with results varying from very good to satisfying one of our main complaints of last year's s4 zoom was the inability to wake the device with the dedicated camera button and launch it into the camera application sadly that's not been fixed by Samsung you can wake the phone as usual and launch the camera from the single shortcut on the screen however you can launch the camera with the shutter button only if your device is active and awake being a camera centric phone with some people still arguing that this is really a point-and-shoot we expected a different camera software instead we just got the same camera UI found on the s5 with a ton of shooting modes you can choose from we applauded the ability to separately set focus and exposure points which comes in and the many times there's also a special mode on the K zoom called Pro suggests which automatically suggests effects depending on the scene you're currently capturing needless to say you can download dozens of effects from Samsung to complement the Cornucopia already found in the device but aside from the usual modes there's also a program mode and the manual mode which is pretty self-explanatory 27 modes are available to choose from out of the box out of which you can display 12 of your choice at any time while having multiple choices is a good thing clutter and the fact that you will probably never use half of them or not but it's really up to you they're there if you want to only show creativity how about the results the 20 point seven megapixel shooter on the K zoom delivers very nice results images are well balanced realistic sharp and under good conditions noise free most of the times we have a major complaint though on our particular unit the far-right quarter of the stills snapped lacks sharpness almost like a special faded out blurred effect was applied we're guessing it's a lens issue because it tends to go away once you start using the optical zoom but then also some of the light goes away as well thanks to the variable aperture range of 3.1 to 6.3 meaning zoomed in pictures will probably be darker exposure and white balance are handled well and with 20.7 megapixels there's a lot of information you can crop into since there's no ring around the lenses anymore you can either pinch the screen or use the volume rockers on the sides debate the ten times optical zoom you no longer need to move in close to your subjects and the results are pretty impressive both in terms of shooting faraway subjects or in creating nice bouquet effects low-light sensitivity is also good though pictures tend to be warmer than those shut under regular circumstances we have no major complaints about the xenon flash which is really strong enough to brighten up the scene easily our biggest concern though is the aforementioned blur on the right side of the frames while it's not something you can't live with if you care about your stills it will bother you that blur is also present on the same right edge of the frame while shooting video zoomed out otherwise the camera is capable of recording good looking videos both outdoors and indoors and the ability to zoom in on the fly optically while you have to learn to live with the sound of the lens zoom motors in your videos is great after more than a week using the kasem we can tell you that our battery concerns from the initial unboxing and first impressions video were spot on the 24 30 milliamp hour battery is simply too small for this device prepared to run out of juice by the end of the day even if you use it as a regular smartphone open up the camera app and shoot your way through today like Samsung wants you to do and you'll have to recharge halfway through or replace the battery with a fully charged one we have no complaints on the performance side of things though we have experienced no lag or hiccups while performing day-to-day activities whatsoever these include phone calls texts emails chats social media music and video streaming navigation and document editing you can also play graphic intensive games without a problem Need for Speed Most Wanted ran without problems though the battery was the bleeding fast coal quality and signal strength are not stellar but they're not on our complaints list either the phone delivers average results in line with most of the smart phones you find in the market we're a bit disappointed by speakerphone performance though regardless if we talk about phone calls or multimedia with such a bulky form factor Samsung could have equipped the K zoom with a more capable speaker the fact that it's backfiring doesn't help either but luckily the speaker is positioned on the top so you won't cover it up with your hand in portrait mode and when it comes to the battery we'll just have to reiterate our thoughts it's too small for such a device but that's the price you have to pay for trying to keep the form-factor a decent size while packing capable hardware and the powerful camera inside we had a lot of complaints last year with the galaxy s4 zoom needless to say most of these are on our 2014 kazoom lists as well while Samsung has definitely improved the specifications on paper it has still not addressed some important aspects like the LED notification or the simplest no-brainer capability of waking the phone into the camera app with the camera button that being said we're still not sure we're able to answer our fundamental questions about this device but we'll try our best is it a phone yes it definitely is a smartphone and they'd rather capable one at that being able to handle most of today's tasks without a problem is it a camera it surely is and a good one who would buy it the person who doesn't care about edit bulk is not a speck head but rather a casual smartphone user is relatively light on using the phone and cares a lot about his or her on-the-go photography why well you tell us why you buy or skip the Samsung Galaxy K zoom in the comments below a bonanza denied you've been watching pocket now full review of the Samsung Galaxy K zoom thank you very much for that you can follow me on twitter at anton denied and follow PocketNow on all the usual social media channels till next time stay safe