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Samsung is one of the most experimental companies on the planet when it comes to various gadget form factors and features. As a follow up to last year’s Galaxy Camera, they’re expanding the Galaxy S line-up with a crazy zoom lens phone. From an optics standpoint, it looks like it might be able to give the Lumia 1020 a run for its money…
The Zoom is an interesting set of features and compromises. Let’s take a look around!
No sooner do I finish up a monster camera smartphone comparison video, than this photo beast gets announced for the United States. Typical.
The S4 Zoom is an interesting beast. One part mid-range phone one part zoom point and shoot. While companies like Nokia went with huge megapixels and cropping to simulate zoom, Samsung just bolted a mechanical zoom lens onto the back of a smartphone. Learning from their experiences in building the Galaxy Camera, now you can have a similar experience which is a touch more pocket-able.
The phone side is decent enough, a qHD 4.3″ AMOLED screen is a bit low res these days, but should help performance stay snappy when paired with the dual core processor on board. There’s 8GB of storage built in and you can add more via MicroSD. All in all somewhat ho-hum for an Android phone these days.
Where Zoom gets interesting is in the camera hardware. A 16MP BSI CMOS point & shoot style sensor is paired up with a 10X hardware zoom, which is controlled via a manual ring. There’s even a proper Xenon flash on board for low light and indoor shots. Sammy makes some decent camera gear, so this pairing looks like it could be formidable. Slamming Android into a proper camera experience is a fun way to shoot, edit, and share photos while you’re out and about. Adding support for LTE on AT&T’s network is just icing.
This adds to AT&T’s increasingly interesting device portfolio, and Big Blue now stands as having one of the widest selection of Android and Windows Phones around.
The Galaxy S4 Zoom is available starting November 8 for $199 on a two year contract. The Zoom will also be eligible for AT&T’s current promo where you can snag yourself a free Galaxy Tab when signing up for a new plan. More info at: www.att.com/galaxys4zoom
Full PR and a video hands on after the jump.
Continue reading “AT&T scores exclusive on Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom”