Yes, you have read that right. The past few days have been tumultuous for the electronics giant, but going on undeterred, Samsung seems eager to turn around the tables at its IFA event in Germany. And here comes out its first defence – an eclectic never-seen-before camera, the Galaxy Camera. It looks great, is puffed up with amazing features, and runs on Android!

The Camera

First, let’s take a look at the camera specifications. The Samsung Galaxy Camera has a 1/2.3″ 16MP BSI CMOS sensor, a wide-angle lens (23mm in 35mm equivalent) and 21x optical zoom. There’s also a pop-up Xenon flash. With that, you can shoot 1080p videos at a rate of 30fps (30 frames per second); or you can shoot D1 (720X480) videos at a rate of 120fps. The clicked photos and shot videos can be seen on a TV via an HDMI 1.4 port available on the device. There is a good 8GB memory to store all those shots, and you can always expand it with a microSD card.

Coming to the camera software, there are different levels of automation – Auto, Casual, Smart Pro and Expert – which you can apply while taking your shots. After that, the Galaxy Camera provides you with various photo editing features that you expect in any high-end camera. You can tag faces and organise the photos and videos in folders within the device without connecting it to a computer (that explains why it looks like a phone at first!).

The Galaxy Camera is well connected through Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and penta-band HSPA with an optional HSPA+ . Although that doesn’t mean that you can make voice calls from it, but you can do every other thing possible. The media can be uploaded onto Samsung’s cloud servers, and you can instantly share with other Galaxy Cameras and smartphones via Samsung’s Share Shot feature. Then there are regular connectivity features like Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS.

The Android

Enough said about the camera, now let’s see the Android part of it. Firstly, a camera having an Android OS is itself a radical innovation. It seeks to invert the present scenario where we are blindly improving cameras fitted in phones; this one is a wonderful camera running on a phone OS. Secondly, it’s the recently released Android 4.1 or the Jelly Bean. There are barely any phones in the market that run on the JB, and here you have a camera sporting the ‘buttered’ OS. Ofcourse with an Android, you get access to all the amazing apps; including ones like Instagram to apply classic effects on your photos, and Dropbox to instantly upload those photos. It also has apps of the now iconic Samsung Galaxy S III, like S Voice, S Planner, and a browser.

Now a bit about the hardware. The Galaxy Camera weighs 305 g and measures 128.7 x 70.8 x 19.1 mm. It is powered by a quad-core 1.4GHz processor and carries a battery capacity of 1,650mAh.  The screen behind is a big 4.8 inch HD Super Clear LCD Touch display.

The price and the date of launch is still a secret, and we are eager to know them. Overall, a good innovation by the company that has been recently slapped a hefty fine for copying. It will be worth seeing how this device sets a benchmark for products from other manufacturers, including the Patent War winners. May be we can see something like an iCamera in near future!

Behold the amazing pictures of this masterpiece, and head on here to read the official press release.

Abhishek

I am a simple and focused guy currently pursuing Electricals & Electronics from BITS Pilani Hyderabad and serving as co-editor at Gadgetronica.com

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