The GoPro series of action cameras has always been a hand-in-hand accessory with smartphones, and a must-have for the daring adventurer who wants to not only go places that their smartphone probably shouldn’t, they want to record themselves going there. Sure, there are tough smartphones from the likes of CAT and various Chinese brands, but some would rather simply carry a separate action camera, not to mention the fact that the GoPro series is much more versatile than smartphone cameras in most situations. This all means that the leak of the GoPro Hero 5 action camera, complete with a new design and new features, is pretty big news to a sizeable chunk of the Android world.
In what will likely go down in history among the messiest device leaks of all time, the GoPro Hero 5 showed up first on Reddit in the form of a user manual, then on a Japanese camera blog called Nokishita, where it was quickly taken down for unknown reasons. Before that happened, however, Mirrorless Rumors managed to grab the photos, along with a sheet of tech specs that give away things like the battery size, ports, and connectivity. A MicroSD slot, a 1,220mAh battery, and a suite of connectivity options are all fairly standard, if a bit of a jump from the GoPro Hero 4. The real stars of the show are the three big design changes that are actually game changers.
For starters, the GoPro Hero 5 sports a pretty sizeable touchscreen and a simpler array of buttons, as opposed to the array of buttons on older models. This interface will make things a bit harder for underwater shoots, but allows the design to be a bit different and the user experience a bit more intuitive. The other change is the fact that the device can now tolerate a bit of water, reportedly up to 10 feet, without a case, making the average snorkeling shoot a breeze, or even a few trick dives into a somewhat shallow pool. Deeper adventures will likely require a special case, of course. Lastly, it seems that the GoPro lineup, starting with the Hero 5, will finally be making the jump to USB Type-C. A mysterious scribbling on the leaked device reads “PVT 3”, which is speculated to stand for “Product Validation Test 3”. If that’s the case, this could mean that we’re looking at a very close to final version of the new GoPro Hero 5, though no release date is available for now.
