Last year, Samsung created another new market niche, outing the first handset equipped with a 10x optical zoom – the aptly named Galaxy S4 Zoom. It has a 16 MP sensor, protruding lens, and a bulky body, making it more of a camera with phone functions you'd take on vacation, rather than something suitable for the everyday grind.
This year Samsung doubled down on the new market niche it created, by introducing the Galaxy K zoom, whose naming scheme breaks away from riding on the flagship's coattails this time. The second edition is better equipped in the specs department, both on the phone, and on the camera side: it now sports a 20 MP sensor, larger screen and better processor. Does the K zoom stand a better chance of becoming something else than a niche device for camera enthusiasts? Let's find out...
In the box
In-ear stereo headphones
Wall charger
MicroUSB cable
Warranty and information leaflets
Design
The 10x optical zoom lens makes for a bulky and hefty phone, but it is still more comfortable to use and carry than a 6” phablet.
At 5.41 x 2.79 x 0.65 ” (137.5 x 70.8 x 16.6 mm), against the 4.94 x 2.50 x 0.61” (125.5 x 63.5 x 15.4 mm) of the Galaxy S4 Zoom, the K zoom is one taller, wider and slightly thicker handset, making it less suitable to operate with one hand than its predecessor. The huge lens area on the back sticks out a bit more, and gets in the way while operating the phone, but one can quickly get used to that. Due to the protruding lens part, the phone also looks funky when placed on a table, with the upper part propped by the camera, and the phone rocking left or right when you tap on the screen.
At 7.05 oz (200 g) of weight, you'll always notice that the K zoom is in your pocket or your hand, but still the heft and dimensions are manageable, considering that you carry a 10x optical zoom device with you at all times. The thing weighs as much as some of those 6-inchers that are flooding the market, so if you are willing to put up with that lack of comfort, you won't have trouble gobbling up the K zoom, too.
Samsung has opted for the perforated look that first appeared with the Galaxy S5, and uses the same soft-touch material for the back. The phone hence feels solid in the hand, providing a good grip, and the weight distribution doesn't lean on the lens part, so you don't need to carefully balance it when operating the screen with one hand. The dimpled battery cover is easily removable, revealing a replaceable unit underneath it. This might come in handy for those photogs that the K zoom is aimed at, since they can carry a spare juicer or two with them at all times, when shooting in the boondocks.
Samsung has outfitted the K zoom with its signature physical home key below the display, which flaunts a good tactile feedback, and the same goes for the volume rocker, lock key, and camera shutter on the right hand side. The left is occupied solely by the microSD slot, which lets you extend the internal storage with up to 64 GB cards.
Typically incorrect colors and disturbingly low peak brightness.
Samsung opted for a larger display diagonal, compared to the 4.3” S4 Zoom. The K zoom sports a 4.8” 720x1280 pixels Super AMOLED display with good 306ppi pixel density. That's fine for most scenarios, including reading smaller text.
Typical for an AMOLED panel, the colors are very inaccurate – not only oversaturated, but also tone-incorrect. The color temperature is also way on the cold side at 8326 Kelvins, so what should be a white background, for instance, is actually light-blue. Thus, you can't trust the K zoom's display accuracy if you go shoe-shopping online, or want to preview your photos on the phone itself.
Moreover, at 294 nits, the panel's peak brightness is pretty low, even compared to the current Super AMOLEDs from Samsung, like the ones on the S5 or the Note 3. Outdoors the screen doesn't reflect much light, so you can tell what's on the display, though if the sun shines directly on it, you'll be in trouble. Viewing angles are pretty good, as the screen keeps its deep blacks from an angle, but the color inaccuracies deepens even further with the slightest tilt. About the only good thing that can be said about the quality of the K zoom's display is its low minimum brightness of 4 nits, so it won't burn your eyebrows if you have to read something on it in the dark.
The numbers below represent the amount of deviation in the respective property,observed when a display is viewed from a 45-degree angle as opposed to direct viewing.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
The new, flatter TouchWiz with its Ultra Power Saving Mode has made its way onto the K zoom, but the Multi-Window mode hasn't.
There aren't any surprises in Samsung's latest TouchWiz interface layered on top of Android 4.4 KitKat in the K zoom. It's the same you'd find on the Galaxy S5, for instance, with the respective Samsung apps set, and stock widgets, like the new Toolbox floating apps set, the Ultra Power Saving mode, or the Magazine news aggregator. Following the recent trends, most design elements, such as the icons or the built-in widgets, now appear flat and more simplistic-looking, with less gradient effects, and more solid colors.
On the other hand, Samsung uses a totally different color and icon scheme for the settings app, which is a bit confusing and looks inconsistent. Still, those are categorized in sections, helping you navigate the maze of options that Samsung offers. That doesn't preclude the UI from having you tap a “Done” button each time an option change needs to be remembered. This two-step confirmation is a bit annoying if you aren't used to Samsung handsets, as most other overlays record and make the change the second you tap on an option.
The traditionally rich TouchWiz functionality is here as well – you can easily access notifications, connectivity switches, and a brightness slider from the pull-down status bar. There's no Multi-window mode here – the one that splits the screen in two, and enables you to run two separate apps at the same time. On a 4.8” display, however, we doubt that you'll have much patience for this kind of multitasking anyway.
The only new app that suggests this is a more special kind of phone, is Pro Suggest. It lists downloadable camera extensions like shooting modes, color effects, and artwork examples, which get added to the camera interface upon installation. Samsung has also partnered with Vine for a special app edition of its short video maker that has zoom buttons directly on the screen, for instance. In addition, the S Studio application lets you edit and trim images and video, then put them together as a slideshow, or a lively collage of sorts.
Processor and memory
With benchmark scores close to Snapdragon 800 handsets, the Exynos 5 Hexa proves a capable processor that runs everything on the Galaxy K zoom with ease.
Powered by Samsung's new midrange Exynos 5 Hexa processor, the Galaxy K zoom interface seems very fluid, with no hiccups along the way. This chip sports two 1.7 GHz Cortex-A15 cores, and four 1.3 GHz low-power Cortex-A7s for the mundane tasks, paired with an ARM Mali-T624 GPU. This processor and graphics combo might not beat the newest Snapdragons in a benchmarking fight, but we'd have to say it makes the K zoom household run smooth, and without quarrels.
Samsung placed the adequate 2 GB of RAM in the handset, which means you won't find the handset struggling for memory when many apps are running at once. There are 8 GB of internal memory in the K zoom (4 GB user-available), and a microSD slot on the left side for up to 64 GB storage expansions.
Very fluid browser navigation and plenty of connectivity options await you with the K zoom, including a 4G LTE modem.
We've got no complaints about Samsung's stock TouchWiz browser, as it renders the pages very quickly, and panning around, as well as zooming or scrolling are fast, and without major interruptions.
The K zoom can offer 4G LTE radio and 42 Mbps HSPA+ download speeds, depending on the region and the carrier it is offered at. The other wireless options are a standard set – Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, DLNA, and an NFC capability thrown in for a good measure. Wired connectivity is offered through the MHL port at the bottom, so you can hook the K zoom directly to your TV with the respective MHL-HDMI cable to preview your photos and videos, instead of counting on the smallish AMOLED display.
Camera
With 10x optical zoom lens and OIS, the Galaxy K zoom is one of the best phones for pictures and video recording.
The 20.7 megapixels camera sensor in the Galaxy K zoom has powerful specs sheet to back it up. The sensor is large at 1/2.3”, it features 10x optical zoom (24-240 mm), Xenon flash, LED focus assist light, and image stabilization. The f/3.1 aperture is subpar, though, compared to the much wider f/2 to f/2.4 in most flagships.
Zooming is done with the volume rocker or an on-screen slider, while the Instant Camera Mode lets you enter directly the camera app from a lock screen by pressing the shutter key and volume rocker at once. You have to briefly hold the volume up key and the shutter button together, then upon release, the camera lens will pop out, and you will be ready to shoot in about two or three seconds. The phone locks focus for less than a second, even indoors, and recording the shot, ready for the next shutter press, takes about a second or so.
There's a smorgasbord of shooting modes and color effects that goes way beyond the typical smartphone camera options, even on feature-rich ones. Apart from the dozen or so ones you can also find on the Galaxy S5, S4 or the Note 3, like Rich Tone (HDR), Panorama, Night, Virtual Tour, Sound&shot, Silhouette, Animated photo and so on, there are at least as many more on the Galaxy K zoom. Granted, a lot of those are for shooting in special conditions, like Dawn, or Landscape, which just overemphasize the typical for the scene colors, but still the choice is there. For tricky dynamic scenarios, the K zoom has a unique feature, allowing you to place the focus on the subject you want, but move the exposure measurement to be taken from another part of the scene. There are a few extra selfie regimes, too. One of those lets you snap a selfie with the rear camera, which can be fired up after it locks your face firmly. The other uses the rear camera for the background, and lets you choose the section where your humble self should appear, after the front camera takes your selfie.
The K zoom has a full “Manual” mode - it lets you change the shutter speed, aperture (kinda), and ISO. For the aperture, you can only choose one of two options – open f/3.1 a – no steps in- between. Zoom in ten times, and you can choose between open f/6.3, and closed f/18.4. This greatly limits the idea of a manual mode. Combine this with the lack of shutter speed priority mode (where you set the speed and the camera automatically adjusts the aperture and ISO to get the right exposure), plus the cumbersome interface, and we can't imagine somebody using this mode often.
Pictures taken with the automatic mode turn out with an overall natural, sometimes slightly bland color representation, compared to reality, but not to an unpleasant extent. The K zoom's white balance measurements are very credible in most situations, too, except for the HDR regime, which tends to produce photos with warm, yellowish overcast. Detail is plenty – as can be expected - and noise is kept in the normal range. However, we must point that when compared to a normal phone, like the S5, the K zoom isn't superior.
Indoors the Galaxy K zoom also performs pretty good, but not excellent. All of our test photos turned out good, but some had not-too-accurate colors, and some were rather underexposed. Noise creeps up indoors, but not outside the expected range. In our studio setup, the Xenon flash fired in all 4 photos, but its color fidelity is pretty good. Strangely, for these pictures, the K zoom used low shutter speeds (1/15 to 1/30), and high ISO (up to 800!), so it didn't use the full power of the Xenon flash. However, in real-life scenarios, the Xenon flash may prove better than its LED-siblings in other phones.
The Galaxy K zoom doesn't record 4K-resolution video, which is a bummer, considering that a lot of flagship handsets now do. It, however, can record extremely fluid 1080p video with 60fps, in addition to the usual 30fps count. The footage sports a very natural color representation, and doesn't skip frames, or feature unusual artifacts. Exposure adjustments while panning around are very quick, and so is the continuous autofocus. Having both a 10x optical zoom lens, and optical image stabilization, makes the K zoom one of the best phones for recording video, as the footage remains steady when panning around, and you can zoom into crazy detail from afar, without sacrificing quality. The phone also records very decent soundtrack to the videos, with the help of the two noise-canceling mics top and bottom. There's a silent zoom option, too, where the lens motor noise gets weeded out if you zoom in while recording, and the zooming action itself is very smooth.
Multimedia
The S Studio gallery alternative intros extra editing options for your pictures and videos, including the ability to concoct an artsy collage.
Apart from the regular TouchWiz gallery, which offers split-screen view, Samsung also offers the so-called S Studio, which adds extra editing options for your pictures and videos, including the ability to make artsy collages and slideshows on the phone itself. Samsung has also partnered with Vine for a tailored app that has the zoom buttons directly on the screen, for better utilization of the K zoom's features while making Vine video clips.
The music player interface with its blocky elements is familiar from the Galaxy S5. The UI might be unimpressive, but it offers all the basics, like song categorization, as well as an abundance of equalizer presets and sound modes to choose from. The loudspeaker is on the average side in terms of quality, as the sound lacks range, but it's quite punchy in terms of strength.
We also get a stock video player runs most popular formats, like MPEG-4, MKV and Xvid (but not DivX) without a hitch, and up to 1080p resolution. Its interface is brimming with options, such as the ability to add subtitles, captions, loop and even edit the video.
With the K zoom's very good call quality, the only gripe with your phone conversations will be holding the hefty handset to your ear.
The earpiece of the Galaxy K zoom sounds strong, with good quality, and only a slight bit of echo prevents us from putting it in the above average category. The two noise-canceling mics, on the other hand, definitely do a stellar job in relaying our voice to the other end of the conversation in a very loud and exceptionally clear manner, weeding out the ambient noises around us. Our only complaint here is the actual holding of the comparatively thick and heavy device to your ear for a prolonged period of time.
Battery
With a 2430 mAh replaceable battery, we wouldn't expect some heroic wonders from the Galaxy K zoom. Still, Samsung cites 14 hours of talk time on a charge, 9 hours of Internet browsing, and 11 hours of video playback, which is a decent endurance. We, however, put these claims to the test, ran our own standardized battery test on the Galaxy K zoom, where it lasted 6 hours and 6 minutes of screen-on time. Nothing absolutely impressive, but still a decent result, or about as much as the Note III managed to endure in our test.
We measure battery life by running a custom web-script,designed to replicate the power consumption of typical real-life usage.All devices that go through the test have their displays set at 200-nit brightness.
One chief cause for concern with a phone that carries 10x optical zoom lens, is a potentially bulky chassis, and unfortunately the Galaxy K zoom is not an exception. It's still as butch and hefty as its predecessor, yet the dimensions are bearable, especially if you are used to carrying large handsets. With that caveat aside, knowing that you have 10x optical zoom in your pocket at all times is a very strong incentive for photo enthusiasts to get the handset, as no amount of “lossless zoom” can near the tricks you can do with Samsung's hybrid device. Discounting the lack of 4K abilities, the Galaxy K zoom can also be considered one of the best phones for video recording, as OIS and 60fps footage stack on top of the optical zoom lens.
If you have no need for the optical zoom, though, the difference in picture quality with the current Android flagships doesn't warrant the purchase of the K zoom. This fact, together with the phone's bulk, make it more of a niche device, suitable for photogs, or for a second phone you would use when on vacation, rather than a daily driver.
One Galaxy K zoom alternative is last year's S4 Zoom, which also offers 10x optical magnification, and similar image quality for about $200 less, but is underpowered in comparison. If you can live without the zoom lens, then you can grab the Xperia Z2, which also has a 20 MP camera, or Samsung's own Galaxy S5. Both are much thinner and lighter than the K zoom, plus they take pictures with close quality. For an optically-stabilized camera, albeit with lower 13 MP resolution, you can check out the LG G2 and the excellent G3, or venture outside the Android world, where the Nokia Lumia 1020, and its large 41 MP camera sensor, will try to lure you away, even offering lossless zoom thanks to the huge resolution .
Software version: KOT49H.C115XXU1ANE1
Pros
10x optical zoom lens
Good picture quality
Steady and fluid 1080p video, recorded with 60fps
Xenon flash
Clean call quality
Cons
Quite a bulky and heavy phone
No 4K video recording
Dim and very color-inaccurate display
Only 4 GB of user-available storage out of the box
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