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back to article Samsung whips out Galaxy Note II, cam-phone with proper zoom lens

After Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Note II at IFA this week, attentions turned to its all-new camera phone, a digital snapper with built-in 3G connectivity. The South Korean firm's latest push into the photography domain introduces the Galaxy Camera with its 16.3Mp sensor, 21x optical zoom and practically every type …

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  1. jai

    WTF?

    it's not April is it? has someone's been cocking about in Photoshop?

    it seems Samsung are not content with making phone with ridiculously tall and wide screens, they're gotta push for the depth axis as well.

    Are they trying to get back to the size of mobile 'brick' phones from the 80s?

    or possibly Samsung have taken the art of coping Apple's ideas a step too far and this timed copied the spoof instead of an actual product:

    http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a401483/iphone-5-to-be-a-camera-in-spoof-ad-watch.html

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    1. Lord Voldemortgage
      Reply Icon

      Re: WTF?

      The camera is not very big for a camera. Don't see a problem.

      19 0
    2. Piro Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: WTF?

      It's a small camera. It just happens to have a full blown OS running on it. It's obviously not supposed to be your everyday phone..

      9 0
    3. thesykes
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      Re: WTF?

      You missed the point, this is a camera, with phone bits added. No matter how good the sensors on a phone camera, the lack of an optical zoom makes them useless for anything other party photos and the odd landscape shot. A 21x optical zoom sounds good to me.

      23 0
    4. fch
      Reply Icon

      Re: WTF?

      If anything, they're "copying" (shall I say: "improve on", because the Samsung thingy does the photography stuff right, good lens, optical zoom) the form factor of the Nokia PureView / N808. I'd be quite interested in an image quality comparison between the two.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Devil

        Re: WTF?

        ...and I suppose the camera doesn't take photos but merely 'improves upon' whatever it's pointed at when the button is pressed.

        1 7
    5. RICHTO
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      Mushroom

      Re: WTF?

      Of rather more public interest, Samsung also announced new Windows 8 phones - primarily an upgraded version of the Galaxy S3....

      0 1
      1. GrantB
        Reply Icon
        Trollface

        Re: WTF?

        lol.

        Looking at the specs of the Note2, it looks like the unreleased, unpriced W8 phone is already a bit behind on the hardware spec.

        Almost like Samsung isn't really trying with Win phones... which given I have never seen one in the wild makes a lot of sense. They presumable get MS onside, possibly lumps of cash exchanged, meanwhile sell boatloads of Android, Bada and soon Tizen phones all for porting (or getting MS to port) yet another phone OS onto some random hardware they have lying around.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good article, except for the fact it's not a phone.

    Due to the minor point that the camera phone you have written about is not actually a phone at all, it seems that your article, heading and sub-heading may need a bit of a re-write!

    It's a camea running Android with wifi and 3G. It's not got any phone functionality.

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    1. Joe K
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      Thumb Down

      Re: Good article, except for the fact it's not a phone.

      Oh dear.

      Yeah it says right at the top of the specs " Device with no support for GSM voice communication."

      http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_camera-4961.php

      Of course, a google of "samsung galaxy cameraphone" shows only the Daily Mail parroting the same lines as this poor excuse of an article.

      2 1
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Good article, except for the fact it's not a phone.

        That's a shame... was starting to think of upgrading to this device rather than getting both a phone and a camera. Too bad. Later, maybe, Samsung or others?

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    2. nichobe
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      Re: Good article, except for the fact it's not a phone.

      Yet.....

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    3. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Of course it is a phone - its the newfangled VOIP

      You still stuck in those silly old GSM phone concepts? This is a 3G VOIP phone which will work with Skype and Google Voice. Get rid of your 'minutes', I did. 3G is also far superior in battery usage...

      1 9
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Of course it is a phone - its the newfangled VOIP

        Yeah, answering calls from Skype and Google Voice on a camera will be just perfect /s.

        1 0
      2. Panzerbjorn
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        Re: Of course it is a phone - its the newfangled VOIP

        You must live in a country that has decent 3g then.

        I live in London where T-Mobile, Orange and O2 are all useless for the kind of consistent data transmission required for VOIP.

        1 0
  3. squilookle

    Good to see the Note 2 and the camera being released with Jellybean. That's how it should be. Hope all those that have released devices with Gingerbread and ICS (especially Gingerbread) recently are watching closely.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Interesting concept

    but I suspect that a 1650 mAh battery won't last long on this smartphonecamera.

    My dumb P&S has a 1900mah and doesn't have to power a screen of that size, plus comms, gps, OS overhead, etc...

    The prospect of having to charge my camera every day kind of kills this for me.

    1 0
    1. Piro Silver badge
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      Re: Interesting concept

      That's odd, my camera has a 750mAh cell and it lasts for a decent amount of time, but I do have spare batteries.

      That aside, that's of no real concern, but you did remind me of a concern - boot time. Nobody wants to leave their camera in standby, because you only use it now and then, and you want the battery to remain intact when left for weeks on end, but you want it to be ready to take that critical photo in seconds.

      I hope they've got a good fast boot solution in place here, a bit like on some HTC Sense phones where it hibernates. That could be a feature in ICS now for all I know.

      2 0
  5. Old Cynic

    Court case has been booked....

    ...that is a blatant rip-off of the Apple iCam, which was the first ever camera with a zoom on one side and a screen on the other.

    Oh wait, it's not 2014 yet, the iCam hasn't been released.

    12 3
    1. Purlieu
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      Re: Court case has been booked....

      ... that's ok, Apple can sue them retrospectively in 2014, for releasing a product 2 years before Apple did, that looks exactly like an Apple product. You heard it here first.

      5 0
  6. Britt Johnston

    a rise, by any other name

    +ve: no expensive cables, no non-standard connectors

    -ve: Can it do voice commands, or ring my utility co for a recharge? Does it even have a microphone or bluetooth?

    0 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: a rise, by any other name

      Ergh, I can't stand the use of +ve and -ve... almost as much (and for the same reasons) as Americans putting "XING" on roads, which translates to "crossing". If you really have to shorten positive or negative, put pos. and neg.

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      1. John H Woods Silver badge
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        Re: a rise, by any other name

        Can't see what's wrong with +ve and -ve just because you don't like them. In fact I reckon pos. and neg. are ambiguous, so I would avoid them.

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      2. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
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        Mushroom

        Re: a rise, by any other name

        Ergh, I can't stand the use of +ve and -ve...

        Quite right, peeps who abuse +/-ve like this should be educated in their correct use:-

        +ve left testicle

        -ve right testicle

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  7. Silverburn
    Thumb Up

    Galaxy Note 2

    Damn, I just bought the old one too...

    Other improvements I'd like to see in this model:

    - better battery life. Even with a 3200, I suspect this will be one day of moderate use only. Alternatives? A fuel cell or something nuclear...:-)

    - less heat (aka wasted battery life). Get busy with this phone, and it gets hot quickly, front and back.

    - a better, more accurate stylus. The current one is crap, with the "ink" often being 1-2mm away from the actual nib.

    Apart from that...yummy! Better start saving my pennies now...

    0 0
    1. Silverburn
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Galaxy Note 2

      woops...it's 3100mAh..soz.

      0 0
  8. Tom 11

    Did anyone have the chance to get hands on with the new note?

    I have the original, albeit through work, am up for upgrade in 2 weeks on my personal phone, want a note 2 so badly, one question...

    Are the menu and back touch buttons compatible with the stylus this time? was a major design flaw in my eyes. Other than that, perfect device (apart from missing a slide out qwerty ;) )

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    1. Fireplug
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      Re: Did anyone have the chance to get hands on with the new note?

      I doubt that the capacitive buttons will work with the pen as the wacom digitiser won't cover them. Apologies if you know this but if you hold the button on the S-Pen and swipe left it activates 'back' and the same press with an upward swipe activates 'menu'.

      Hope that helps

      1 0
  9. Matt_V
    Paris Hilton

    " it's clear Sammy sees bigger blowers as something consumers crave"

    is it just me that just wants a desire / iPhone 3 sized phone but with better internal specs then?

    0 1
    1. Old Cynic
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      Re: " it's clear Sammy sees bigger blowers as something consumers crave"

      This is Android mate, you can have almost anything you want. Apple may let you have a choice of 3.5" or 4" screen in a couple of weeks time though (apparently)...

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  10. TeeCee Gold badge
    Facepalm

    Some time ago.....

    ....in a phone review extolling the embiggening of the megapixel count in some manufacturer's phone, I did ask when there would be a camera with a phone in it.

    Samsung? That was supposed to be a joke!

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  12. Only me!
    Trollface

    IFA 2012 YES! I AM TAKING A PICTURE!

    Why is this article not about Yahoo???

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  13. Ian Entwistle

    Agree on stylus of teh original

    coming from a N900 to the Note via a Dell Streak I was looking forward to a decent screen res and the ability to use a stylus but its so inaccurate its a joke

    in ebay gallery you click and image and either the one below or above opens.

    I very rarely get the thing out now and yet it was one of the main differentiators when I was buying.

    I love the size of the thing and it does most of my casual computing but I can burn a battery in half a day in decent use. it can as others say get extremely hot.

    0 0
  14. Nick De Plume
    Meh

    Note I was a surprising hit, this will sell too. But the camera?

    Strange enough, I see the original Note being used more by women than men - despite their (on the average) smaller hands etc. I think it has to do with (almost all) women carrying bags.

    Not sure about the camera though. Nikon recently has a similar device too.

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