Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom review

Smart phone cameras have improved dramatically in just a short few years. Gone are the days of blurry VGA-quality pics -- some phones now pack megapixel counts higher.

Phone cameras are still limited by size though. It's not possible to fit pro cameras' massive sensors and huge lenses into something that slides neatly into your jeans. Samsung thinks it has the perfect compromise -- a 4.3-inch phone boasting a 16-megapixel sensor and a 10x optical zoom. The Galaxy S4 Zoom is the only smart phone, in fact, that has an optical zoom.

If you've always wanted a phone with a good zoom, the S4 Zoom is currently out on its own.The S4 Zoom's fat body is extremely awkward to use as an everyday phone.

The LED light

Design

Here's an interesting philosophical conundrum: which is the front and which is the back? The front of a camera is where the lens is, but the front of a phone is the screen. It's definitely half and half, but as the S4 Zoom is named after a phone, and you can make calls with it, I'm going to refer to it as a phone, so the screen is the front.



From the back then, the S4 Zoom looks like any standard compact digital camera. There's really nothing there that indicates that a phone lurks within. A chunky hand grip is off to one side and the enormous lens barrel sits on the other.

The S4 Zoom as a camera

The S4 Zoom is the only phone -- and 'phone' is stretching the definition -- that packs in an optical, as well as a digital zoom. The focal length starts at 24mm, which is quite a wide angle -- allowing you to capture more of a scene in one picture. It zooms to 10x, which should be more than enough magnification to get a lovely shot .

Other camera-specific hardware includes a physical shutter button on the right and a screw mount on the bottom for plonking the Zoom on any normal tripod. The S4 Zoom's sheer bulk does mean it's more comfortable to hold for taking photos than the standard S4 is -- that chunky battery compartment is easy to wrap your fingers round. There's also a little hole for popping in a lanyard if you're nervous about dropping it.
Behind the epic zoom barrel is a 16-megapixel, backside-illuminated CMOS sensor. It's physically bigger than the sensors you'll find inside normal smart phones -- the S4 included -- although not as big as the one inside an average digital SLR. A larger sensor typically means that more light can hit it, which should greatly improve image quality.

Image quality

With a bigger sensor stuffed inside, you'd be right to expect greatly improved quality over standard phone cameras. While the images were definitely good by most phone standards, I didn't find them to be particularly more sharp or more evenly exposed than the Galaxy S4.

The S4 Zoom as a phone

The S4 Zoom is running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, almost the most recent version of Google's mobile operating system. The interface is basically the same that you'll find on any of the other phones in the S4 range. There are multiple homescreens to fill up with apps and widgets, while other apps are kept in a separate app list.

It's quite bright, and has satisfyingly deep black levels and rich colours. It might not have the pixel density to square up to its bigger brothers, but it will at least make your photos look lovely and colourful.

There's 8GB of internal storage as standard, of which 5GB is available for use. That's not going to last long once you start snapping away at full resolution, so you'll need to make use of the microSD card slot. You can set all photos and videos to save to the card and, thanks to a software update from Samsung, you're able to install some apps to the card too.

Battery life

With a chunky 2,330mAh battery stuffed inside, the S4 Zoom should be able to keep going for a decent amount of time away from a plug. Indeed, I found it to be pretty long-lasting when using it primarily as a phone. If you're fairly cautious, you shouldn't struggle to it out a day of use.

Conclusion

With its massive sensor, impressive megapixel count and 10x optical zoom, the Galaxy S4 Zoom may seem like the shutterbug's phone of choice. It's certainly the only phone to opt for right now if you value zooming in on things above anything else, although its image quality in general isn't significantly better than other high-end smart phones.