If you’ve been waiting for this beast of a phone then your wait is over. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom is now available from IPMart for RM1,577. But before you rushing to make your purchase, you must know that the units currently on sale from the website are grey imports and do not come with a Samsung-backed warranty.
The Galaxy S4 Zoom is what happens when a point and shoot camera rapes a Galaxy S4 mini, you get a dedicated camera that you can use as a smartphone.
The S4 Zoom boasts a 10X optical zoom lens (24-240mm) with a bigger than average 1/2.33” 16MP imaging sensor that’s supposed to improve picture quality. On top of that, you get a 4.3-inch qHD (960×540) AMOLED display pushing out 256ppi. Under the hood, there’s a dual-core 1.5GHz processor with 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage. Storage is expandable with microSD up to 64GB. For video calls and selfies, there’s a 1.9MP secondary camera included as well.
Instead of an LED flash that you typically get with phone cameras, the Galaxy Zoom uses a faster Xenon Flash that should give you better lighting in low light conditions.
In terms of connectivity, the Galaxy S4 Zoom comes with the usual WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and certain versions have LTE support as well but we don’t think the units being sold by IPMart have LTE.
As a phone, the Galaxy S4 Zoom is bulky to use and you look like dork using it. As a camera, while the S4 Zoom may be able to take better pictures than most phones, it’s barely average as a point and shoot camera.
So what’s the point of the Galaxy S4 Camera then? When it comes to sharing or uploading pictures that are better than what a smartphone can muster, nothing comes close to the Galaxy S4 Zoom (ok, perhaps maybe the Galaxy Camera does come close). The ability to make phone calls is a bonus but the bulk of the device is not something you’ll be comfortable having in your pocket. At the end of the day, how many times have you looked a camera said to yourself “I wish I can use this to call someone”?
Check out the Galaxy S4 Zoom from IPMart here.
