Well that didn’t take too long, Samsung officially took the curtains off its Android powered compact camera right before CES earlier this year. The Korean company showed it off again at the very recent Samsung Forum 2014 which happened about two weeks ago and it looks like the camera has finally landed in our shores with a retail price of RM1,699, much cheaper than the original Galaxy Camera that was launched last year.
The Galaxy camera 2 features a 16.3 effective megapixel 1/2.3” BSI CMOS sensor, and features one of my favorite feature – a 21x optical zoom lens with OIS on board. It may have the same large 4.8” display at the back, but the overall dimensions is larger than previous generation Galaxy Camera, measuring at 132.5 x 71.2 x 19.3mm; for comparison’s sake, the original Camera measures at 128.7 x 70.8 x 19.1mm. Don’t be too turned off by how gigantic it is though, it may be bigger, but it’s lighter at 283grams compared to 300grams to the Galaxy Camera.
Other specs include 1.6Ghz quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM on board, 8GB of expandable memory, Android 4.3, ISO up to 3200, Full HD video recording, built-in Xenon Flash, NFC, and a larger battery capacity of 2,000mAh. Find out more about the Galaxy Camera 2 in our previous posts or check out our hands on post for image samples. While the Galaxy Camera series may be rather bulky and lack 3G connectivity unlike much smaller but similar camera phones like the Galaxy S4 Zoom, it has one of the best optical zoom on board, the 21x optical zoom with a pretty awesome OIS on board, allowing you to capture images from afar even if you have terribly shaky hands on me. It was one of my favorite feature when I reviewed the original Galaxy Camera, so let’s hope things will be even better this time round.
The Galaxy Camera 2 will be available in black or white in Malaysia by “end of February” (I assume that’s today), at Samsung Brand Stores and Samsung Authorized Dealers.
