In a room full of phones, the camera stood out. I'm not sure whether the
Samsung Galaxy Camera will be a best seller - it's a lot of expensive
tech for a point-and-shoot camera category where people are used to
prices under $300. But for me, it was the weirdest, most interesting
thing at an AT&T event full of interesting things.
The Samsung Galaxy Camera
is a point-and-shoot camera that runs Android 4.1. It isn't a phone,
although it has a microphone and it could run Skype if you really wanted
it to. We have hands ons from IFA and last month's Photokina already,
but I got to take a bunch of photos with the Galaxy Camera, and I wanted
to show them to you.
The first thing to realize: it works
like a camera, not like a phone camera. So, you get fast autofocus, 21x
optical zoom, no shutter delay, and the ability to focus on pretty much
anything.
Coming from a realm of phone cameras and
cheap point-and-shoots, the 21x zoom impressed me the most. Take a look
at that shot of the street corner, which I took from a 20th-story hotel
penthouse, through a window. (It's a foggy day and the photo is through
glass, which is why everything looks very pastel.) It's sharp, and it's
spy camera-like.
The camera
handles backlighting much better than phone cameras do. That photo of
Alex and Eugene in the demo room? It would have been so washed out on a
phone camera.
I also really liked the manual and scene settings on the Galaxy Camera.
There are a bunch of filters; you can pre-enhance colors, or create
silhouettes on backlights. But what I liked most was the manual mode,
which popped out very clear rings to let me set shutter speed, aperture,
exposure compensation and ISO. Hooray! As a guy who's often been stuck
using whatever camera PCMag photo analyst Jim Fisher gave me that day,
it was thrilling to see a manual mode so clear and easy to operate.
The mundanity of the camera experience
is what's extraordinary about the Samsung Galaxy Camera. It works just
like a camera. But it's a full Jelly Bean tablet. Will that make sense
to people? I'm not sure. But I like it.
The Samsung Galaxy Camera will be
available from AT&T sometime before the end of the year, and I'm
desperately hoping it won't require a contract. It has HSPA+ and Wi-Fi
and could operate entirely over Wi-Fi, so it'll work even without
AT&T service.
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