As expected, Samsung early today made official the successor to last year’s Galaxy S4 Zoom, the Galaxy K Zoom, at an event in Singapore. Touting advanced camera abilities and functions, the Galaxy K Zoom also maintains an ordinary smartphone’s “phone” capabilities and also comes with the updated TouchWiz that debuted with the Galaxy S5.
Like last year’s S4 Zoom, the main focus of the device is the camera and it is sufficiently beefed up. It also features the S5’s dotted “band-aid-like” plastic back for improved grip when taking shots unlike last year’s S4 Zoom which had the much-hated glossy plastic back. Of course there are notable differences between the two as far as the camera features since this is an upgrade after all.
Special software and hardware features of the Galaxy K Zoom’s camera include:
- AF/AE Separation (Auto Focus/ Auto Exposure Separation)
- Selfie Alarm – for timed selfies (you know 🙂 )
- Pro Suggest – offers 5 optimized filter settings
- 10x optical zoom
- 20.7 megapixel BSI CMOS sensor
- Optical Image Stabilizer (OIS)
- Xenon flash
- It has the Galaxy S5’s Ultra Power Saving mode (added battery life while you’re out on an Instameet, S Health (Lite edition) and Kids Mode (forget about restricting in-app purchases when your kid is playing games, you never know what naughty images you’ve captured that your kid may share with the world without your knowledge)
- A studio app for editing photos and videos without requiring the intervention of your PC
The rest of the specs are as below:
- Size and weight: 137.5 x 70.8 x 16.6(20.2)mm / 200g
- Display: 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED Display (1280×720)
- Processor: Samsung Exynos 5 (5260) hexa-core (1.3GHz Quad-Core + 1.7GHz Dual-Core)
- Camera: (for details see above) 20.7 MP main / 2.0 MP front
- Memory: 8 GB internal storage (expandable) / 2 GB RAM
- OS: Android 4.4 KitKat with TouchWiz
- Battery: 2430 mAh
- Network: LTE and 3G capable
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4+5GHz, HT40, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC
Here’s a video introducing the K Zoom
http://youtu.be/S6pdF6pgeeo
We are yet to hear from Samsung how many units of the Galaxy S4 Zoom it actually shipped but we can be sure they were considerable enough to warrant a follow-up device. Furthermore, a lot of focus on its flagship Galaxy S5 was on the camera and its features and with the selfie craze not going anywhere soon, we’ll see how far they can go with this since it is actually not as slimmed up as the smartphone you all around with but has a more powerful sensor and is specially made for those capture moments.
