Here at Android Headlines, we get to play with and review a bunch of interesting devices. Some of the most interesting to me are Android-powered cameras. We’ve reviewed the Galaxy Camera and Galaxy Camera 2 from Samsung, as well as their Galaxy S4 Zoom. In fact, all three of our editors have had time with at least one of them now. Late last year, Samsung took things up a notch and introduced a mirrorless camera running on Android, and it joined their NX lineup. This was the Galaxy NX Camera. I immediately fell in love, because I love the fact I can have my pictures auto-upload to the likes of Google+ and Dropbox. And a mirrorless camera will produce much better pictures – especially macro – compared to a point and shoot. So today, we’ll be taking a look at the Galaxy NX Camera and seeing if it’s worth the $1200 price tag.
Editor’s Note: We’ve been using the Galaxy NX Camera 4G LTE model without a SIM card for about 2.5 weeks now. We even used it to shoot all the pictures at HTC’s Double Exposure event earlier this week.
Hardware
There’s not much to say about the hardware here. It looks and feels just like any other high-end mirrorless or DSLR camera out there. It is pretty light though, in comparison. There’s a full EVF on there with your shutter button, record and dial as well. Of course, all that can be navigated on screen as well. Our review unit came with the 18-55mm OIS lens. Which is the basic kit lens for the Galaxy NX Camera.
Carrying around the Galaxy NX Camera was pretty nice. Unlike a lot of other high-end mirrorless and DSLR camera’s it was much lighter, as I stated already. Which is nice when you’re carrying it around for a few hours to get pictures at an event like HTC’s. The weight of my DSLR is what turned me on to the Sony RX100 M1 (which I’ve now upgraded to the mark 3 of the RX100). But I wouldn’t mind using the Galaxy NX Camera for certain events. It won’t fit in my pocket like my Sony RX100, but it’s still a great camera.
Software
We’ve got Android 4.3 Jelly Bean on here right now. It’s full fledged Android. And you can actually take calls on it with Hangouts and Google Voice. I actually did it to see how it’d work. And it was pretty awkward but cool at the same time. Just don’t do it in public. We’ve got all kinds of dials inside the Camera app, its actually a much nicer camera app than what we have on Samsung’s smartphones. Which you’d probably expect. Samsung also has a bunch of filters built into the camera app, which you can see an example of those in the “camera” section below.
Otherwise, all your favorite Android apps do work on here.
Camera
The most important part right? The camera is amazing. It’s nice and quick, and takes really nice pictures. After all it is a 20.1MP camera sensor. So there’s lots of megapixels there to work with. You can switch between manual and auto-focus, which I typically use auto-focus when taking pictures of a device, as I’m usually holding the device with one hand and taking pictures with the camera on the other. But it is nice to have the option to quickly switch between the two. We’ve got a ton of pictures taken with the Galaxy NX Camera. We didn’t upload them to the site, because it would make the review load very slowly. So check out this album on my Flickr account to see them all in full resolution. Note: The pictures from the HTC event were done at a lower resolution, while the others were not.
Final Thoughts
It’s a great camera from Samsung. But the thing is, should you spend $1200 on this? Probably not right now. There are a few things I think Samsung needs to improve, like the battery. I’d buy generation 2, especially if you are a camera enthusiast. How many of you are already using mirrorless cameras?