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Samsung's Galaxy NX Is A 4G Android Interchangeable Lens Camera That Lets You Post To Instagram
Now that video on Instagram just got real, a connected pro camera with direct access to Android apps makes a fair bit of sense. Enter the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy NX.
Samsung continues to push its Galaxy brand into new devices’ types and categories, a strategy aimed at extending the success it’s had with the brand in smartphones. Today the Korean giant has added the Galaxy badge to its high end camera range, with the launch of this digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC): its first interchangeable lens camera to run Android.
Samsung’s other high end cameras have been badged NX but this is the first time it’s used the Galaxy brand on its pro range. It’s not, however, the first time it’s pushed the Galaxy brand into camera tech territory — having recently extended the Galaxy S4 range with a hybrid smartphone point-and-shoot camera with a 10x optical zoom on the back. That device, the Galaxy S4 Zoom, remains a mid-range affair. It’s certainly not targeting the professional photographer market, as the Galaxy NX presumably is. Samsung also previously launched another mid-range camera running Android, called the Galaxy Camera — making extending the brand to its pro MILC range a natural next step.
The Galaxy NX runs Android 4.2.2 skinned with a version of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI tweaked to make sense for the camera format. This means the UI defaults to the camera app view. Swiping left from there brings up a familiar Samsung Android home screen where users can get at all the usual Android stuff including Google Play, the web browser, plus apps — like Instagram, say. And that’s the obvious use-case for a bit of kit like this: being able to post near-SLR quality photos direct to apps like Instagram or share on social media, without even having to pull the photos off the camera first. The Galaxy NX has both 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi built in. It is Samsung’s first interchangeable lens camera to include LTE, in fact.
The version of Android on the Galaxy NX does not include a phone dialer but that’s the only other major software difference when compared to a typical Samsung smartphone. The point here is clearly for Samsung to leverage the familiarity of its TouchWiz environment to try to bolster the appeal of its high end camera kit.
Who might the Galaxy NX appeal to? Perhaps someone hankering for a better camera but not necessarily yet especially well versed in how to use more pro photography equipment. The external look and feel of the Galaxy NX bears that theory out, being especially plain looking — almost devoid of markings. It’s also terribly lightweight for such a large bit of kit, adding another convenience string to its bow.
The Galaxy NX has a 20.3MP APS-C CMOS Image sensor that’s 24mm in size. It’s powered by Samsung’s DRIMe IV processor, which it says is 4x faster than its previous processor. The device supports up to 25,600 ISO, and it’s the same family of interchangeable lens as Samsung’s prior MILCs.
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Samsung Reveals The Ativ Q, A Convertible Windows 8 Tablet That Runs Android Too
Samsung has just kicked off its Premiere event at Earls Court in London, and decided to lead with one particularly curious device — in addition to the ability to transform from a tablet to a notebook, the company’s shape-shifting Ativ Q convertible also gives users a taste of the Android ecosystem.
As is usually the case though, news of the Q slipped out just a bit ahead of schedule — Italian-langauge site NotebookItalia came through with early press images of the Q hours before the official reveal (though there was no mention of the Q’s dual-OS tendencies). That initial leak pointed to the inclusion of an Intel Core i5 processor, as well as 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, which have now been corroborated.
Of course, all of that sort of pales in comparison to the notion that your Windows desktop apps are just a touch away from your Angry Birds accomplishments. According to Samsung, users will also be able to transfer data between the two OSs, though at this point it’s unclear exactly how that works.
Stay tuned — we’ll have some hands-on impressions ready to go once the event finally dies down.
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.
Instagram Now Hosts 16B Photos For 130M People Who Have Interacted With 1B Likes
Instagram’s Kevin Systrom told us today told us how people “come together to share the world in real time” as the company planned to unveil Instagram’s video service — which we first reported earlier this week. And he also revealed new stats: Instagram now hosts 16 billion photos for 130 million users, who have interacted on the network with 1 billion likes.
That’s 30 billion more users than Facebook reported for Instagram just a month ago, and more than double what Instagram had when Facebook first made its offer to acquire the app, in April of last year, when Instagram had around 50 million monthly active users.
That underscores what a runaway success the app has been so far. Earlier today I noted how Instagram is currently the most popular photo sharing app on the iPhone in the U.S., with over 35% of iPhone users accessing it every month, giving it a lead of nearly 20 percentage points over Snapchat.
It will be interesting to see how the introduction of the new video features impacts that: yes, it will enhance the service, but the question is whether current users will feel that it interferes with what Instagram already offers, and subsequently migrate elsewhere; or whether they will naturally move to using it alongside the photo features. That’s putting to one side whether Instagram might pick up completely new users who are interested in the video service alone. At the moment, Vine is the most popular among the mobile video apps, but with only around a 10% market share, there are many more users for both to target.
In fact, with Vine allowing for 6.5 seconds of video and Instagram going for 15 seconds of video, you could almost wonder whether some might just use both.
Read our liveblog here.
More to come. Refresh for updates.
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