Gadgetory

well this is David with the verge and this is samsung's new Galaxy camera which is essentially a point and shoot camera matched up with a smartphone it even looks like a combination of the tooth there's a zoom trigger and a shutter press on top and a big lens on the front but there's also a huge 4.8 inch display on the back that's actually a decent looking camera a lot like some of samsung's other point-and-shoots and ironically it's smartphones its plastic body is really wide though and it actually starts to tip forward a bit when the lens is extended just because of how the weight is distributed so it's a little awkward the 4.8 inch display is really the most important part of the Galaxy camera though it's a fantastic 720p screen and it's honestly better than we've seen even on a Samsung smartphone before it's also a touch screen and is as responsive and useful as you'd expect your phone to be a slightly smaller screen might be better since it would actually make the camera a little easier to hold and use especially in one hand but this is a really great camera display the Galaxy camera runs Android 4.1 jelly bean same as the galaxy s3 and it's pretty much the exact OS you'd expect to see on a Samsung phone plus some camera specific features full Android is good and bad though you get all the apps you want for photo editing sharing and things like that but you also get a lot of notifications and pop-ups and sounds that just distract while you're trying to use your camera there is fortunately a blocking mode which lets you turn all of this stuff off but that's not on by default the full Android experience is also not great for battery life normally cameras hibernate when you turn the screen off so the lasts a long time just on standby but with the galaxy camera it's still grabbing emails tweets and everything else so the battery only lasts a couple of days even if you're not touching the camera there's also a setting that turns the wireless radios off whenever the screens off but for some odd reason this isn't on by default either the kenner interface is blocked into three categories and it automatically initiates anytime you have press the shutter button there's Auto which is just to set it and forget it automatic mode there's smart which lets you pick scene modes and filters and let the camera adjust automatically an expert which basically puts the camera in manual mode and lets you control aperture and shutter speed and ISO and the light Auto smart worked fine but when you're an expert it gets a little complicated to wade through all the different menus and options and you're constantly flicking and scrolling on the touchscreen to change settings one physical dial would be really nice to have but instead you end up using the screen for everything the two most integrated apps with Android and galaxy our Instagram and Dropbox the Instagram app itself is a little awkward since it only runs in portrait and that's not really how you'd want to hold the camera but it's at least part of the sharing API is an Android you also can't zoom an Instagram or any third-party app right now but apparently that features at least coming to Instagram soon for the most part at least for now you're probably better off shooting pictures in the camera app itself and then sharing them from there which fortunately Android makes really easy the other great app is Dropbox which isn't specifically designed for the galaxy camera but it's auto upload feature is awesome you just turn it on and every time you take a picture it automatically uploads to Dropbox and you get it everywhere else the most frustrating thing about the Galaxy camera though is that it's not a very good camera it takes soft pictures without particularly great dynamic range or low-light performance there's also a lot of barrel distortion meaning the center of the image tends to bulge as you look at it the pictures are about the equivalent of an entry-level point-and-shoot which would be fine if this were priced like an entry-level point-and-shoot but it's not fortunately that 1080p video situation is a lot better but it's still really nothing to write home about so in effect the Galaxy camera is just a $200 camera that costs $499 the extra money does buy some great bells and whistles but it honestly might be too many we'd love to have Android in the camera with all the apps and options on the big beautiful screen but we'd like to have camera optimized app selection or funeral notifications or at least some of those things turned off by default to make the Galaxy camera better as a camera it's a great proof-of-concept and we definitely hope other manufacturers pickup the idea that Android can power a great camera but unfortunately the Galaxy camera isn't really that great camera