Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom Review and Specification

Samsung has been recently having an obsession to provide solutions of convergence in weird form factors. We saw that with the Mega 6.3 and the Galaxy Note 510, both being devices with a certain feature, unknown to that specific form factor, hacked in, and the S4 Zoom falls in that same category. It is basically a Smartphone with a camera slapped on its back, or a point and shoot with a smartphone slapped on its back, you get the idea. Samsung started this trend with the Galaxy Camera, a high end point and shoot running Android, which is basically a connected camera, with 3G. Expectedly, Samsung has taken it further with the S4 Zoom adding phone functionality. Priced at Rs. 29,990, is the S4 Zoom a hack job or is it actually a good enough cameraphone.

Hardware and Design

The S4 Zoom feels like a bit of a hybrid in the hand. At the bottom of the phone, there is a large grip to help you hold the handset when using it as a camera. Features such as a tripod screw mount and a dedicated shutter button complete the camera's credentials.

On the smartphone side, the design is like a smaller Galaxy S4, with the same physical home button and touch-sensitive back and menu keys.

As a camera, the Galaxy S4 Zoom is quite a nice thing to hold. We were worried, given how close the screen is to our palm when gripping the device, that it would start getting unwanted touch inputs. Not so.

The gloss plastic does like to pick up grease though, and after a while we found the phone becoming fairly difficult to grip when using it as a camera. This is a not a handset you want to drop either, as its lens sticks fairly far out when in use.

As a phone though, the Galaxy S4 Zoom's ergonomics fall flat. It's more than half an inch thick and feels very hefty compared to modern smartphones. Your finger also tends to rest naturally over the camera lens, which means you need to keep cleaning it.

However, we can't really fault the actual hardware of the phone. The 4.3-inch 540 x 960 super AMOLED screen is better than the majority of those on offer in compact cameras. It's bright and clear, and great for viewing pictures on.

Being an AMOLED display though, its colour reproduction is fairly inaccurate and over-exaggerated. As a result, photos can end up looking far less exciting on your computer screen than the S4 Zoom's.

Internal specs include a dual-core 1.5GHz A9 processor, Android 4.2.2, 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of memory that can be expanded via microSD. Android feels nice and snappy, but crucially, the camera is also very quick.

This time round, Samsung has got the ergonomics of the camera side of the Zoom pretty much nailed. As a phone though, it's still too cumbersome. We can't help but feel that Nokia has it right with the Lumia 1020, which is far more compact and still functions nicely as a phone.

Camera

The S4 Zoom feels like a bit of a hybrid in the hand. At the bottom of the phone, there is a large grip to help you hold the handset when using it as a camera. Features such as a tripod screw mount and a dedicated shutter button complete the camera's credentials.

On the smartphone side, the design is like a smaller Galaxy S4, with the same physical home button and touch-sensitive back and menu keys.

As a camera, the Galaxy S4 Zoom is quite a nice thing to hold. We were worried, given how close the screen is to our palm when gripping the device, that it would start getting unwanted touch inputs. Not so.

The gloss plastic does like to pick up grease though, and after a while we found the phone becoming fairly difficult to grip when using it as a camera. This is a not a handset you want to drop either, as its lens sticks fairly far out when in use.

As a phone though, the Galaxy S4 Zoom's ergonomics fall flat. It's more than half an inch thick and feels very hefty compared to modern smartphones. Your finger also tends to rest naturally over the camera lens, which means you need to keep cleaning it.

However, we can't really fault the actual hardware of the phone. The 4.3-inch 540 x 960 super AMOLED screen is better than the majority of those on offer in compact cameras. It's bright and clear, and great for viewing pictures on.

Being an AMOLED display though, its colour reproduction is fairly inaccurate and over-exaggerated. As a result, photos can end up looking far less exciting on your computer screen than the S4 Zoom's.

Internal specs include a dual-core 1.5GHz A9 processor, Android 4.2.2, 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of memory that can be expanded via microSD. Android feels nice and snappy, but crucially, the camera is also very quickThe Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom has a 16 Megapixel 1/2.3″ CMOS sensor with a pixel size of 1.34 um, which is pretty standard stuff when it comes to point and shoots but definitely special on a hybrid camera phone like the S4 Zoom. The sensor also can go upto ISO 3200. On top of the sensor sits the Samsung-made lens. It has a focal length of 4.3-43mm with a 10x multiplier in optical zoom. When the crop factor is to be considered, the 35mm focal length equivalent of the lens becomes 24-240mm. That’s a wide to telephoto lens with a variable aperture.

The aperture varies from f3.1 – f6.3 which is pretty slow but that’s what you get from a compact point and shoot camera these days. The lens incorporates optical image stabilization for non-shaky pictures at full zoom, longer exposure of low light shots, and of course stabilized video too. Talking of video, the camera can record full HD 1920×1080 video at 30 fps, with the optical zoom enabled and can record 1280×720 videos at 60 fps. This is all accomplished by a feature packed camera interface..

This time round, Samsung has got the ergonomics of the camera side of the Zoom pretty much nailed. As a phone though, it's still too cumbersome. We can't help but feel that Nokia has it right with the Lumia 1020, which is far more compact and still functions nicely as a phone.