Samsung has just launched the Samsung Galaxy NX Camera at an event in London, and it is an Android camera that features interchangeable lens, making it the first of its kind. As we expected when Samsung introduced the original Galaxy Camera, the Korean giant is now climbing to the top of the image quality ladder by adding interchangeable lenses to its Android cameras.
The Galaxy NX Camera features a 20.3 Megapixel sensor with hybrid autofocus, which should mean contrast-based and phase detection, which we expect it to do very well with low-light auto-focus (a classic problem for most non-DSLR cameras). Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy NX is compatible with existing lenses for the NX series of interchangeable cameras, including the 45mm 2D/3D lens which was previously announced is compatible with this camera which is capable of shooting still images at 8.6 FPS with a shutter speed of up to 1/6000 seconds.
On the Android side of things, Samsung is using a quad-core processor (soc) at 1.6GHZ which powers Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). As usual, you will find most of the same software that Galaxy smartphones have, most likely with a few exceptions. Obviously, the camera is compatible with popular Android apps and that’s the whole point. And don’t think that this is limited to Instagram or Facebook.
We expect that with a rise in quality, semi-pros and photo app developers are going to start building specific apps that go well beyond casual photography and into more artistic or professional areas. Samsung has done a great job at leveraging its Android knowledge and this is the most advanced Android camera ever built.
To conclude on the hardware features, this camera has a 4.8″ LCD touchscreen and an integrated electronic viewfinder, which is often an expensive option in competing cameras. At this moment, Samsung has not talked about pricing and availability, so we will have to wait a little longer for those details.