Samsung launches high-end Galaxy K Zoom smartphone with 10x zoom lens

New Delhi: Samsung has just announced the Galaxy K Zoom, a slim smartphone that looks like a mix of Galaxy S5 and a Samsung Galaxy Camera. Samsung is calling it a camera-specialized smartphone and says it's a world's first in the industry. The K Zoom in slimmer and sleeker than its predecessor, the S4 Zoom, and boasts of a 20.7-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor on the back, complete with Xenon flash and optical image stabilization. The talking point of the device is a 10x optical zoom lens that extends from the back of the camera to bring distant objects up close. The lens can magnify up to a decent 10x, or pretty much exactly the same as last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom. While the S4 Zoom barely fit into a pants pocket, the K Zoom is more phone than camera phone. Design-wise, the K Zoom is a flat smartphone, and is much easier to hold as a result. Though compared to other devices its thickness is still on the higher side.The K Zoom's lens is capable of 24-240mm at full zoom, F/3.1-6.3. There is additional digital zoom functionality too, ISO 100-3200, optical image stabilisation, and Full HD video recording functionality at 50fps in the UK, 60fps in US. While the image processing is performed on a dedicated chip, you can lock screen to shooting in just 0.3 seconds.Made for photo-nerds, the smartphone gives easy and fast access to taking beautiful pictures. You can pinch to zoom, or hold a button to take a series of shots. And behind all these interesting camera features, don't forget that the K Zoom is also a full-fledged smartphone. The device sports a 4.8-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED panel, and is powered by a Samsung Exynos hexa-core processor that combines quad-core 1.3GHz and a dual-core 1.7GHz processors. Other specs include 2GB of RAM, 8GB or 16GB of internal storage, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, microSDXC support up to 64GB, a 2,430 mAh battery and Android 4.4 KitKat. To quicken its photo-taking ability, the company has placed a dedicated shutter button at the lower-right side of the phone, which is not so sensitive that you might accidentally extend the lens while it's tucked away.The device offers new camera features, especially for selfie addicts. The Selfie Alarm lets you select the area of the frame where you want your head to appear; then when you turn the camera around, it'll play a tone when everything's lined up, taking the photograph a few seconds later. The K Zoom also offers assistance in navigating through different "smart" modes, each of which adjusts camera settings for specific scenarios For instance, in Pro Suggest mode, the camera will offer up several options for taking the best pic of what's on the LCD. The K zoom won't be available in the US at launch. It comes in the same black, white, and blue dimpled body as the Galaxy S5.Overall, it is not only the design that has improved, but the image quality has taken a big jump too – images captured on K Zoom look pretty vivid, colorful and sharp on its bright display. It seems like that Samsung has finally done some justice with its camera-specialized smartphone range as the K zoom now comes with the much required zoom function. Certainly, this new breed of camera smartphones is likely to come much closer to offering the quality and experience we might expect from a dedicated camera.