Samsung's at it again: trying to combine a high end camera and a smartphone with the Galaxy K Zoom.
Given its Galaxy Camera and Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom
devices are expensive and a difficult sell to the average consumer, be
it through price or design, I was half expecting the range to be
scrapped in 2014, at least on the phone side.
But it's
back again in the 'super-camera-phone' market, this time with the Galaxy
K Zoom. The K denotes a different product line for the South Korean
brand, and while it's spiritually the successor to the S4 Zoom, it's the
start of a new segment.
It's a shame actually, as the K
Zoom is a more worthy device of the S name than any camera-focused
smartphone Samsung has launched so far.
A sleeker chassis and powerful innards make it quite similar to the Samsung Galaxy S5, and with the rubberised and dimpled back there are a lot of design similarities too. A slimmer chassis hides the lens wellGiven
we probably won't see a Galaxy S5 Active (thanks to the current model
being pretty robust) and the S5 Zoom not happening, the Galaxy S5 Mini
is probably the only offshoot from the main brand, and that's something
Samsung is keen to preserve given the rebooted K series.
I'm
not sure why it's gone for K - it seems a straight rip-off of Sony
Ericsson's K series, which stands for Kamera, the Swedish word for...
well, I'll leave you to work that out.
But Samsung isn't giving up at forcing a camera-first smartphone onto the masses - can it compete with the likes of the Nokia Lumia 1020 to really steal the title of best camera phone?
Design
The design of the K Zoom is very Samsung. If you've held a
device from the brand recently, you'll know just what I mean. The back,
as I've said, is rubberised and very grippable, which seems to have
negated the need to have a massive handle on the back to take more
stable pics.
One of the key problems with the Samsung
Galaxy S4 Zoom was the fact it was just SO huge, meaning it didn't sit
very well in the pocket, the normal resting place for your smartphone.
The K Zoom is actually larger in height and average thickness, but is a
lot sleeker.
A thinner design that shares a lot of the S5's design language
With
that in mind, you needed to really, really want a powerful camera on
your daily communication device - while there weren't any official sales
figures touted, it didn't seem to be flying off the shelves.
With
the K Zoom Samsung is doing something differently here - namely, trying
to make it look more like a smartphone than before. Think more Lumia
1020, with a massive protrusion on the rear, rather than a full on lens
and grip.
I managed to misplace it a couple of times by
putting the K Zoom in my pocket and forgetting it was there, showing
that if you don't mind a bit of extra heft you can easily live with it
and still get sharp pictures.
The zoom lens packaging is impressive
The
20.2mm thickness is over double that of most smartphones, but when you
consider that Samsung has wedged in a 10x optical zoom in there too, it
makes a lot of sense that you'd have to have some small sacrifices.
This
sadly, and confusingly, doesn't lead to a larger battery - in fact,
it's actually smaller than the main flagships on the market at 2430mAh,
which is lower even than the HTC One M8.
Given
one of the hardest elements of the phone will be taking pictures with
the screen fired up I'm astounded Samsung has decided to go this low.
At least the battery is removable
The
rest of the phone is as you'd expect from Samsung - light enough at
200g but also feeling a little cheaper thanks to the plastic used around
the edges.
This material doesn't always mean it
shouldn't feel premium, but I really struggle to feel like the
faux-chrome is worthy of the higher price tag the likes of the K Zoom
will command from Samsung.
The screen is also a little
below the spec I'd expect, given the K Zoom shares a lot of features
with the Galaxy S5. At 1200 x 720 it's not even full HD, despite the
4.8-inch size, and while I don't think you HAVE to have a 1080p display
in every device, that sharpness will translate to your choice of photos,
which arguably look better on the S5 thanks to higher PPI.
It's
still Super AMOLED HD, which means it shines brightly enough, but the K
Zoom has a screen that feels like one from an upgraded Galaxy S3
and that feels a little old hat to me. It does give the battery less to
do in terms of firing fewer pixels, but I think I'd rather have the
sharpness.
So - onto the main element of the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom: the
20.7MP backside illuminated CMOS sensor, designed to be larger, take in
more photons and generally be the best snapper you could want in your
pocket.
Samsung has clearly slanted the K Zoom towards
the more discerning snapper, but not to the point of rivalling a DSLR by
any means.
There's a lot of effort being put into
automating the process of taking a picture, be it Pro Suggest (which
assesses the scene and chooses a filter / mode for you) or just the
dizzying array of scene choices, from Snow to Fireworks to Waterfall. It's
bewildering to the average user, who probably will use around a quarter
of the modes in general use. But then you can do some cooler things
like split the auto-focus and auto-exposure, which means you can have
the scene zoomed on the area you like and then choose to raise or lower
the exposure by tapping on another area.
It takes a
little experimentation, but when you get it right you can dramatically
change the composition of the shot - silhouettes in particular come out
well, although you'll generally need a couple of attempts to get it
right.
Sadly / brilliantly (depending on your stance) the
K Zoom also comes with the ability to take automatic selfies. Rather
than having to use the wide-angle front sensor, you can choose where on
the screen you want to be, turn K Zoom main lens towards you and keep
wiggling it until you hear the beep.
Any phone that uses the word 'selfie' still makes me sad
It
takes a few seconds, but the result is a high-quality picture of
yourself with your favourite celebrity / at a life-changing event /
let's be honest, in your bedroom trying to see what it would look like
with your hair parted the other way.
In a wider context, the feature set on the Galaxy K Zoom camera is pretty strong, with a lot of power behind the sensor.
But
what about auto mode? Someone who wants the ability to take pictures
quickly and effectively without having to think seems to be the user
Samsung is targeting here, and an automatic scene-sorter is crucial to
them.
In short: it wasn't that impressive. The method of
booting up was slow (faster than the S5 if you chose the lockscreen
camera icon, admittedly) where you needed to hold the volume up key and
the shutter button together from sleep to start the camera.
Auto mode and Pro Suggest should be combined
I've never had a problem just using the shutter key to achieve this, and it takes a while to get used to.
The
10x zoom was picky - you can pinch the screen to set the zoom, which
was cool, but being exact was harder, even with the volume keys to
perform the same thing. And there was supposed to be a button that
instantly zoomed in 10x, but using this was odd. It would zoom to
required level, pause, and then keep going into the digital range.
Seemed a bit pre-production to me in that respect.
The
overall picture quality, as you can see below, is pretty strong still.
Burst mode, Xenon flash or just general shots came out pretty well,
although erred heavily on the higher side of exposure when compared to
something similar, like the Nokia Lumia 1020 or a dedicated prosumer
camera.
Side by side with the Nokia Lumia 1020
The
manual mode didn't seem easy to use either, with elements like ISO and
Exposure the only think you can manually alter from the screen. This
might have been me not being able to find the wider range of options,
but they were pretty hidden.
The camera interface was as
strong as usual from Samsung, with everything available in a small grid
from which you could drag them into a 'quick launch' bar at the side for
general use.
It's odd that a camera of this power
doesn't allow you to record in 4K – I'm no advocate of that
functionality, as it's a battery, space and time waster with very little
use – as it sends a mixed message from Samsung, namely one that says 4K
video capture is mostly a gimmick at this stage.
The S5, predictably, has a far smaller sensor
Pro Suggest also allows you to download more themes from the Samsung store and with some hilarious choices as you can see below.
Charisma. Just... Charisma.
This
automation makes it hard to understand which market the K Zoom is aimed
at: will the general consumer who wants a decent photo now and then be
willing to pay for the lower-specced device?
The K Zoom vs the Lumia 1020
And
will the photography hobbyist want to put up with the extra pocket heft
and price when they will probably find the Galaxy S5 (or other
smartphone flagship) an acceptable substitute when they've left the big
DSLR at home?
It all depends on price, which will have a big bearing on who will actually buy the K Zoom.
Camera software and tools
Samsung did improve the overall
camera experience from the S4 Zoom, though, adding some fun and useful
features. For example, you can now select separate autofocus and
autoexposure points and there's object tracking, making it easier to
shoot moving subjects or just recompose your picture while keeping the
focus locked where you want it.
Mixed in with the camera's
multitude of shooting options is the new Selfie Alarm that lets you
position a box on screen for where your face will be so that when you
turn the camera around, it can lock on and give you an audible warning
before it fires off three shots.
The Selfie Alarm appeared on the Galaxy Camera 2 earlier this year, and an adaptation of one of that camera's other options, Smart Mode Suggest, appears here, too.
Joshua Goldman/CNET
Called Pro Suggest on the K Zoom, you frame up your subject, half
press the shutter release, and up pops a row of shooting mode
suggestions that can be applied. Want to take a picture of a
fantastic-looking dinner? Point at your plate and you'll end up with a
list of options like Macro or Food or Low-light modes to use to get the
results you're after.
There is also a Pro Suggest Market, which
will allow you to create, save, share, and download custom settings. So,
say you're shooting ocean scenery, you can either search the Market and
download settings to use, or create a custom batch you like and share
them.
As for video, you can record video at resolutions up to
1080p HD at 60 frames per second and it has Samsung's Multi-motion
option for high-speed clips with slow-motion playback. And you have use
of the zoom lens while recording.
Joshua Goldman/CNET
OS and core hardware
Back on the phone side, the LTE/3G Galaxy K Zoom runs Android 4.4
KitKat with Samsung's ever-present TouchWiz interface on top, which
gives it the Galaxy S5's look and feel. However, the K Zoom isn't as
feature packed as the Galaxy S5 with its fingerprint scanner, heart-rate
monitor, and other top-tier specs, and that makes total sense: this
device is all about the camera.
That said, Samsung did outfit the phone with its own six-core Exynos 5 Hexa processor
(four 1.3GHz and two 1.7GHz cores), which is backed by 2GB of RAM.
Onboard storage is a paltry 8GB, but the easily accessible microSD slot
on the left side supports cards up to 64GB.
Flipping through
screens and opening apps felt responsive in the little time I spent with
the K, and it was certainly snappier than the S4 Zoom, which I also
took to my briefing. The K Zoom's screen is excellent by camera
standards, but its 720p resolution is decidedly midrange compared to the
S5's 5.1-inch 1080p AMOLED screen.
Joshua Goldman/CNET
Who's it for?
The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom is clearly a specialized device, not a
smartphone for the masses. Samsung said the Galaxy K Zoom is meant for
the photo enthusiast who wants a better camera on his or her phone.
It's true that a crossover device like the K Zoom is more convenient
than carrying a camera and a phone, but having a zoom lens doesn't
necessarily make the K a better camera. Nor does jacking up the
resolution on a sensor that, while larger than most smartphones, is
still fairly small by camera standards.
Still, if you miss
having the optical zoom capabilities of a point-and-shoot, but don't
want to carry a second device (or buy two devices) and don't want to
lose the instant sharing capabilities of a smartphone, the Galaxy K Zoom
solves that. And, as a bonus, its photos and video might be better than
your average smartphone, especially where the optical image
stabilization comes into play.
The Galaxy S4
Zoom tried to address this, but it was a bit too much camera and not
enough smartphone. Here, Samsung has hit a better balance between the
two -- at least from a design perspective.
Samsung hadn't shared
pricing, but said the availability focus is on Asian markets first,
with Singapore specifically being an important launch market. It isn't
ruling out a U.S. launch, but at the time of my briefing there were no
US plans.
Sample Camera Please note: the following samples are from pre-production hardware / software
Features and Interface
In terms of features, the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom feels a lot
like a stripped down S5, which is again odd given the differentiation
that the company is trying to instil between the two.
S
Health Lite is onboard (I've not drilled down into exactly what this
means, but I'm guessing that some of the more advanced heart-rate and
exercise features will have been stripped out) and Kids Mode is added
too, showing that Samsung does intend the K Zoom to be a device that
you'll use as a normal smartphone. Then again, it's not
the easiest to hold thanks to the slightly unbalanced nature of the
phone, which of course comes from the lens on the top.
The
storage issue is potentially a big one though. There's only 8GB on
board, of which you'll lose around 2GB through the integrated system
needs.
That still leaves you a pretty hefty 6GB of space,
which won't fill up that quickly if you use the K Zoom only for
photography. But given it's also meant to be a modern smartphone you'll
struggle quickly with apps and music coming on board.
You
can expand the amount of space available through the microSD slot, up
to 64GB if you've got a microSDXC card to hand. I'm not sure why you
can't have a 128GB iteration of the technology in there, but Samsung
claims it's not supported.
My worry is that Samsung
phones seem to suffer unless you have the right memory card (of
sufficient quality) in the phone. The Gallery will run slowly, some apps
won't open as fast as you'd like and other problems abound if you don't
keep enough space available.
And 8GB simply isn't enough, and the notion that you have to buy a memory card to use the K Zoom properly doesn't seem fair.
Easy access to the microSD slot
On
the processor side things are a little better though: you've got a
hexa-core CPU in there, according to Samsung. This is only technically
true as it's actually a 1.3GHz quad-core and 1.7GHz dual-core option on
offer. The former is for the heavy lifting of picture processing and the
latter for general smartphone use.
It's a method that's
been bandied about for a while, and should help preserve battery life...
if it works correctly, and often these things don't. I've no reason to
think this will be the case here, and the K Zoom ran pretty fluidly when
I was testing.
Interface
The Samsung Galaxy K
Zoom is a decent enough phone to use with the screen bright and vivid
and packing the same upgraded TouchWiz UI that debuted with the S5 in
Barcelona this year.
The interface is clean and obvious -
when you slide downwards from the top of the screen things look a
little more next-gen than before.
Sliding through the
phone was a breeze, as you'd hope it would be with a quad-core 1.3GHz
processor running the show for the heavier tasks. 2GB of RAM is more
than enough in my eyes, although I'm still waiting for Samsung to give
more details on the CPU actually used at the heart.
Then again, it's not
the easiest to hold thanks to the slightly unbalanced nature of the
phone, which of course comes from the lens on the top.
Samsung smartphones are performing really well in the market.
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