The Galaxy S4 Zoom was a strange device from last year, we reviewed it and found it be neither a great camera, nor a great phone and more of a device that suffered from an identity crisis. never mind all that though it was big enough a deal that Samsung was experimenting with rolling out variants of the Galaxy S line other than a Mini version, and 2013 saw an Active, a Zoom as well as a Mini version of the Galaxy S4. It looks like this year might be much the same – minus the Active version, as the Galaxy S5 itself is water-resistant. A recent benchmark for what could be the Galaxy S5 Zoom has leaked out on GFXBench site.
The device in question features a model number of SM-C115, which is similar ot last year’s SM-C101. Of course, there’s a chance that this is just another Samsung device, but which other Samsung device is going to be shipping with a 20-megapixel camera? Specs wise, this looks to be much the same as last year’s model, which is something we can’t quite understand. The screen resolution has been increased however to 720p on a 4.8-inch panel, versus the 4.3-inch qHD display last year. Meanwhile, the dual-core Exynos has been upgraded to a Hexa-Core CPU a la the Galaxy Note 3 Neo, with a 1.3 Ghz clock speed. 2GB of RAM is onboard here, and it appears there’s room for external storage, such as microSD cards, just like before. An incremental update, for sure, but nothing to write home about.
We’re unsure as to why Samsung feels that the compromise with such a device should be in its specs. After all, just because the camera is going to take up most of the space, doesn’t mean they have to skimp on the CPU or display resolution. With a 720p display, we doubt those 20-megapixel (which are 5184 x 3888 for those number fans out there) images will look too good on this next generation Galaxy S5 Zoom. Of course, there’s a chance this is a prototype and there’s a good chance that the final product will be a lot different, but judging from last year’s Galaxy S4 Zoom we wouldn’t be surprised if these were the sort of specs we’d see at launch.