After introducing the latest flagship of S series, Galaxy S4, Samsung introduced several stepsons of this series. Children which doesn’t have any resemblance to its legacy and just have their name. Galaxy S4 Active, Galaxy S4 Mini and finally Galaxy S4 Zoom are these children. Although the Galaxy S4 Zoom is known from the S series, but there is no resemblance to S series, besides the appearance of it. In this article we are going to discuss that, is buying a gadget, specialized for photography, by amateur photographers acceptable or not. In other words, can Galaxy S4 Zoom meet the needs of amateur photographers?
Hardware and software specifications
By looking at the hardware of S4 Zoom, little similarity to Galaxy S4 can be found. The screen of S4 Zoom is 4.3-inch with a resolution of 960x540 pixels. Although the screen size and resolution is less than S4 but its type is same which is super AMOLED. The main processor is 1.5 GHz dual-core which 1.5 GB of running memory and 8 GB of internal memory accompany it. In addition, the Mali-400 used as the graphic processing unit to render graphical data. Therefore, there is no similarity in hardware between S4 and S4 Zoom. In the sensor section, just four sensors, accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity and compass can be found. The frontal of the Galaxy S4 Zoom has same great design of the S series, but in the back of the phone, we are faced with a digital camera. The most prominent element in the design is the raised lens of the camera which takes the attention. This lens will open in the usage, so the autofocus and optical zoom functions will become available. The operating system which is intended for this gadget is Android 4.2.2 which accompanied with the TouchWiz 5. Unfortunately, the special software features available in S4 are not available in Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom.
Camera Specifications
The camera of this interesting gadget has a 16 megapixel resolution. This camera is equipped by a 33.1/2 inch sensor. The camera of this phone has 10x optical zoom. Thus, by zooming on the subject, the quality will not be lost. One of the best features of this camera is that it equipped with Xenon flash. Thus, in photography of areas with low light, the flash will not have a negative impact on the quality of the pictures. The other features of this camera are: auto focuses, optical image stabilization, GPS location tag, touch focus, face and smile detection, panorama and HDR photography.
The movie mode of camera is capable of recording images at full HD resolution and with 30 fps. The quality of photos taken by this camera is far better than other powerful gadgets such as Nokia Pureview 808 or Galaxy S4, especially in places with low lights or subjects in motion. Compared with basic digital cameras with near same hardware as the Galaxy S4 Zoom, still better quality can be found on this model. However, it is obvious that this gadget cannot compete with semi-professional or professional cameras and there is a big gap between them.
Conclusion
Samsung with producing the Galaxy S4 Zoom, tried to enter Android operating system in to digital cameras world, so that besides the photography capabilities, makes the photo and video sharing in social networks easier. But it seems that this approach has a reverse effect in the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Videlicet, a combination of Android phone with a powerful camera becomes a gadget which brakes the line between a smartphone and a digital camera. In fact, this interesting gadget can act perfectly as a basic digital camera while serving the user as a smartphone. Before this camera, there were many requests for better cameras on the smart phones, so that the need for separate digital camera removed, and the Galaxy S4 Zoom came to kill two birds with one stone.
