Samsung Galaxy K Zoom aims for mobile photo enthusiasts

Smartphone makers continue to pile on camera features, but there’s one thing they’re all missing: a zoom lens.

Samsung tried to fill that hole with the Galaxy S4 Zoom, an Android 4.2-powered smartphone with a 10x optical zoom. It was a bit of a mess, though, more like a point-and-shoot camera that happened to make phone calls.

The Galaxy K Zoom (K is for Kamera), on the other hand, actually looks and feels more like a typical smartphone should. Or, at the very least, it is a much more svelte compact camera, but one that happens to also make phone calls.

Design

Samsung hasn’t eliminated the optical zoom — after all, that’s the handset’s signature feature and entire reason for being — but the K Zoom’s curved back and recessed lens barrel make it far easier to slide in a pocket than the original S4 Zoom.

The company has also ditched the bulging grip of the original, and shaped the K Zoom into a sleeker, more uniform package that feels more natural to use as a phone and a camera.

Laying the K Zoom and S4 Zoom on their backs side-by-side, you can really see how much Samsung was able to shave off. Measuring 5.4 inches tall by 2.8 inches wide by 0.65 inch thick (0.79 inch at its thickest point), or 137.5mm by 70.8mm by 16.6mm (20.2mm at its thickest point), the K Zoom is still a handful. For a phone, its weight of about 7 ounces, or 200 grams, makes it heavy. And, actually, for a pocket camera with the same lens, that’s heavy, too.

By comparison, the S4 Zoom measured 4.9 inches tall by 2.5 inches wide by 1.1 inches thick, or 125.5mm by 63.5mm by 27mm; and weighed 7.3 ounces (208 grams), while Samsung’s slim Galaxy S5 smartphone measures 5.6 inches tall by 2.9 inches wide by 0.32 inch deep, or 142mm by 72.5mm by 8.1mm, and weighs 5.1 ounces, or 145 grams.

Flipping the K over, its larger 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD screen accounts for its bigger height and width over the S4 Zoom. However, it was really that phone’s thickness from the 10x f3.1-6.3 24-240mm lens and that hump of a right-hand grip that made it so awkward to pocket and use.

Unlike the S5, the volume rocker moves to right side along with the power button and a dedicated shutter release toward the bottom. The volume controls the camera’s zoom (you can also zoom in and out by pinching on the screen). Also, pressing the dedicated shutter release button and volume rocker turns on the camera. The headset jack is up top, while a Micro-USB port is on the bottom.

The perforated front cover is removable for access to the device’s 2,430mAh removable battery. A battery kit with an extra pack and charger will be available for aftermarket purchase, as will screen protectors and cases.

Camera chops

Despite having the same general lens specs, Samsung cut down the thickness by redesigning the lens and recessing it. The lens has nine elements total, but when the camera is off, three of the elements drop down, further flattening the lens. Turn the camera on and those three lens elements slide up into place.

It has optical image stabilization, too. That’s not only important when you’re using the telephoto lens, but also in low light to help with hand-shake blur from longer shutter speeds. A Xenon flash is also onboard.

Behind the lens is a 20-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor. That’s a 4-megapixel-resolution bump from the S4 Zoom, but the sensor’s physical size remains the same — 1/2.3-inch. Cramming more pixels onto a small sensor generally isn’t a good idea, but it will likely get you some flexibility when it comes to enlarging and cropping.

The sensor is bigger than you’d find in almost all smartphones though, the Nokia Lumia 1020 being one exception, and it’s the same size sensor found in the majority of point-and-shoot cameras.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the output from the camera on anything larger than its screen and these were pre-production versions, so I can’t say if the photo quality has improved.

Camera software and tools

Samsung did improve the overall camera experience from the S4 Zoom, though, adding some fun and useful features. For example, you can now select separate autofocus and autoexposure points and there’s object tracking, making it easier to shoot moving subjects or just recompose your picture while keeping the focus locked where you want it.

Mixed in with the camera’s multitude of shooting options is the new Selfie Alarm that lets you position a box on screen for where your face will be so that when you turn the camera around, it can lock on and give you an audible warning before it fires off three shots.

The Selfie Alarm appeared on the Galaxy Camera 2 earlier this year, and an adaptation of one of that camera’s other options, Smart Mode Suggest, appears here, too.

Called Pro Suggest on the K Zoom, you frame up your subject, half press the shutter release, and up pops a row of shooting mode suggestions that can be applied. Want to take a picture of a fantastic-looking dinner? Point at your plate and you’ll end up with a list of options like Macro or Food or Low-light modes to use to get the results you’re after.

There is also a Pro Suggest Market, which will allow you to create, save, share, and download custom settings. So, say you’re shooting ocean scenery, you can either search the Market and download settings to use, or create a custom batch you like and share them.

As for video, you can record video at resolutions up to 1080p HD at 60 frames per second and it has Samsung’s Multi-motion option for high-speed clips with slow-motion playback. And you have use of the zoom lens while recording.

OS and core hardware

Back on the phone side, the LTE/3G Galaxy K Zoom runs Android 4.4 KitKat with Samsung’s ever-present TouchWiz interface on top, which gives it the Galaxy S5’s look and feel. However, the K Zoom isn’t as feature packed as the Galaxy S5 with its fingerprint scanner, heart-rate monitor, and other top-tier specs, and that makes total sense: this device is all about the camera.

That said, Samsung did outfit the phone with its own six-core Exynos 5 Hexa processor (four 1.3GHz and two 1.7GHz cores), which is backed by 2GB of RAM. Onboard storage is a paltry 8GB, but the easily accessible microSD slot on the left side supports cards up to 64GB.

Flipping through screens and opening apps felt responsive in the little time I spent with the K, and it was certainly snappier than the S4 Zoom, which I also took to my briefing. The K Zoom’s screen is excellent by camera standards, but its 720p resolution is decidedly midrange compared to the S5’s 5.1-inch 1080p AMOLED screen.

Who’s it for?

The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom is clearly a specialized device, not a smartphone for the masses. Samsung said the Galaxy K Zoom is meant for the photo enthusiast who wants a better camera on his or her phone.

It’s true that a crossover device like the K Zoom is more convenient than carrying a camera and a phone, but having a zoom lens doesn’t necessarily make the K a better camera. Nor does jacking up the resolution on a sensor that, while larger than most smartphones, is still fairly small by camera standards.

Still, if you miss having the optical zoom capabilities of a point-and-shoot, but don’t want to carry a second device (or buy two devices) and don’t want to lose the instant sharing capabilities of a smartphone, the Galaxy K Zoom solves that. And, as a bonus, its photos and video might be better than your average smartphone, especially where the optical image stabilization comes into play.

The Galaxy S4 Zoom tried to address this, but it was a bit too much camera and not enough smartphone. Here, Samsung has hit a better balance between the two — at least from a design perspective.

Samsung hadn’t shared pricing, but said the availability focus is on Asian markets first, with Singapore specifically being an important launch market. It isn’t ruling out a U.S. launch, but at the time of my briefing there were no US plans.

CNET Senior Writer Aloysius Low contributed to this story.