The second and final major camera announcement out of Samsung today was the successor to the Android-powered Galaxy Camera, aptly named the Galaxy Camera 2. Although it boasts many of the same specs as the first Galaxy Camera, the new shooter is a more powerful and lighter version that's sure to score points with lovers of the first model.
While smartphones have, especially of late, taken to blurring the lines between camera and phone, "smartcameras" like Samsung's Galaxy Camera flipped the idea on its head by putting a phone's operating system on a camera rather than the other way around.
Since then, Samsung has announced a few other options in the same milieu, (e.g. the Galaxy NX interchangeable lens camera and the 10x optical zoom Galaxy S4 Zoom) with fairly little in way of competition on that front. But Chinese electronics manufacturer OPPO is looking to move in on Samsung's territory.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 hasn't even made it into the hands of everyone who wants it, and yet there's already a rumor going around that the company is working on a different version geared more towards smartphone photographers with an eye for quality.
Samsung did a lot to advance the idea of a "smartcamera" late last year by announcing the Galaxy Camera -- an Android-powered compact camera that looks and feels more like a giant smartphone than an traditional point-and-shoot. However, some smiles turned to frowns when people learned that it would be sold through mobile carriers such as AT&T with 3G or 4G data plans.
If you're one of the frowning photographers, get ready to turn it back into a smile: Samsung has announced the pricing and availability of the new WiFi-only version that it unveiled back in February.
While we're on the subject of Android-powered cameras: Samsung announced a new camera model for its Galaxy lineup this past Tuesday. It's called the Samsung Galaxy Camera (Wi-Fi). As you can probably guess from the name, it's simply the original Samsung Galaxy Camera without the 3G/4G capabilities (and with a smaller price tag). In other words, you'll have to rely on Wi-Fi for connecting to the Internet rather than subscribing to a data plan for your camera.
After receiving much press coverage for its groundbreaking fusion of camera and smartphone, Samsung's $500 Galaxy Camera finally hit store shelves in the middle of last month -- AT&T store shelves.
Although the launch was done exclusively through what's considered to be the worst US carrier, it appears that Samsung will soon be branching out to additional providers. Verizon customers are reportedly next in line for the unique smartcamera.
Samsung released the open source kernel files for its new Galaxy Camera late last week, something commonly done in the smartphone world -- at least with certain platforms -- but a foreign concept in the world of digital photography. This opens the door to all kinds of possibilities as hackers begin to peer into the cameras brain and dream up new possibilities for how it should work.
Developers are already talking about the possibility of introducing voice calling to the camera -- a feature Samsung left out of the camera, presumably to avoid cannibalizing its smartphones.
Samsung's smartphone-esque Galaxy Camera finally has a definite price and launch date. AT&T announced today that it will begin selling the Android-powered camera on November 16, 2012 for $500. The camera comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and can be connected to the Internet via the carrier's 4G mobile network.
Hello future. We have now entered the age in which wireless telephone carriers launch dedicated digital cameras. AT&T announced today that it will be the first major carrier in the US to offer the Samsung Galaxy Camera. The reason this upcoming Android Jelly Bean-powered camera will be offered by phone companies in addition to standard gadget retailers is because it's one of the first digital cameras that you can purchase a 3G/4G data plan for.
Samsung's new Galaxy Camera will be the first point-and-shoot to which you can add a 3G or 4G data plan when it arrives on store shelves in October. One of the major benefits of being connected to the Internet all the time is that the camera will be able to take full advantage of cloud-based services. Services like Dropbox.
Samsung confirmed today that customers who purchase a Galaxy camera will automatically receive a free 50GB Dropbox cloud storage account -- the same perk currently offered to some Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone buyers.
Well, that's one leaked camera certainly didn't take long to become a reality. Less than half an hour after we shared the first leaked photos of the Samsung Galaxy Camera, the camera was officially announced over in Berlin. Here's the basic spec lowdown: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a 16 megapixel 1/2.3" BSI CMOS sensor, a 21x f/2.8-5.9 23-480mm (35mm equiv.) lens, a 4.8-inch HD LCD screen, a minimal smartphone-esque design, a 1.4Ghz quad core processor, 8GB of internal storage, ISO of up to 3200, and 3G/Wi-Fi or 4G/Wi-Fi.
Want a phonecamera instead of a cameraphone? It's something that we were joking around about just months ago, but it might soon become a reality. It has only been two days since rumors of a Samsung Galaxy-based camera emerged, but now photos, specs, and details about the camera have been leaked. Portable gadget blog Pocketnow somehow got its hands on a press kit, revealing details about the compact camera that the web has been itching to find out.
The photograph above confirms what the rumors suggested: that the camera can best be described as a compact camera slapped onto a standard smartphone.