Samsung Galaxy K Zoom review: First Impressions
The S5 Zoom gets the special K treatment
The Galaxy K Zoom is this year’s version of the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Samsung has sensibly changed its naming convention to avoid direct comparisons with the Galaxy S5, but the idea is basically the same. It's a more camera-obsessed alternative to Samsung's top-end Android.This is a fully-featured Android phone, but it also has some camera features you don’t get in other phones. Its lens is constructed of glass elements rather than plastic ones, and you get a 10x optical zoom, massively increasing what you can do with the Galaxy K Zoom's camera.
Watch our Galaxy K Zoom hands-on video:
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom – Design and Features
Having an optical zoom is great, but it does ensure that the K Zoom is a lot chunkier than Samsung’s other Galaxy phones. It’s 16.6mm thick throughout most of its length, and 20.2mm thick by the camera housing.However, the design is a lot more phone-like than either the Galaxy S4 Zoom or the Galaxy Camera 2, which are this phone’s closest relatives. The camera grip has been dropped, making the K Zoom look and feel more like a mobile that just happens to have a giant optical zoom on the back.
This phone is not going to be for everyone, obviously, but handling-wise it’s not too bad. The back has a nice smooth curve that makes using it as a normal phone easy. Just don’t try to fit it into the pocket of a pair of ultra-skinny jeans.
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Here's the K Zoom with lens retracted next to the Galaxy S5
Like the Galaxy S5, the back of the K Zoom pops off, giving you access to the battery and microSIM card slot. And also like that phone, the texture of the back is dimpled. The black version we tried doesn’t have quite the same soft touch finish as the S5, but you can get a similar array of colours. The K Zoom comes in black, white and blue finishes.
Samsung generally puts microSD card slots into its phones, but in a camera-obsessed phone like this, having extra memory is all the more useful. Especially as internal storage is just 8GB. There’s a flap covering the memory card slot on its right edge, and it’ll take cards up to 128GB (Samsung only guarantees 64GB, though).
So far, the K Zoom seems much like a normal Galaxy phone that has taken on a bit of belly wobble in order to fit in a ‘proper’ camera lens. We appreciate the new ergonomic style given – unlike the Galaxy Camera 2 – this is still primarily a phone, but nonetheless the chunky body and 200g weight will be deal-breakers for many of you.
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom – Screen
The
Galaxy K Zoom has a 4.8-inch screen, of the same Super AMOLED type used
in other high-end Samsung phones. It’s a bit smaller than the displays
of the top-end Android phones of the moment, but using a smaller display
helps the K Zoom stay reasonably accessible - having a phone with a
giant footprint as well as a super-chunky body would be a step too far. 
It’s a decent screen: bright, colourful and reasonably sharp. Although 720p rather than 1080p like the S5, this is still a big step up from the 960 x 540 resolution of the Galaxy S4 Zoom.
Don’t go expecting Galaxy S5-grade treats, though. As well as being a bit lower-res – something that is noticeable thanks to the PenTile screen type – the Galaxy K Zoom doesn’t have the colour accuracy of the S5. Like Samsung’s older OLED phones, the colours look slightly oversaturated and you don’t get the OLED-neutralising Cinema mode seen in many other Galaxy-series devices.
Using a slightly lesser screen is undoubtedly a move to ensure that Samsung can sell the K Zoom for less cash (or at least not more money) than the Galaxy S5.
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom – Software and Specs
The
Galaxy K Zoom has a similar version of TouchWiz to the Galaxy S5, and
it sits on top of Android 4.4, currently the newest version of the OS. It’s fairly similar to older versions of TouchWiz, with a bunch of visual tweaks to make it look a bit less stuffy. The Settings menu is now a collapsible scroll of colourful circles, and the notifications menu has been given a similar tweak. It’s still not the classiest UI, but it makes good use of the K Zoom’s colourful OLED display.
There’s a rather interesting processor running the show here. It’s a Hexacore Samsung Exynos 5 CPU, using a similar strategy to the company’s Octo-core chips. There are two high-performance 1.7GHz A15 cores and four high-efficiency (but lower power) A7 cores.
It’s a step down from Samsung’s top-end Android devices, but performance seems fairly good. I bet that things will get a bit lag-tastic once you’ve eaten away most of the internal memory and installed a bunch of apps, but the same is true of the Galaxy S5. Like the S5, the K Zoom has 2GB of RAM.
There are no serious compromises in connectivity either. You get NFC and Cat4 4G, and all the usual smartphone essentials. The K Zoom lacks ac Wi-Fi, but I doubt whether many people will care all that much.
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom – Camera
It’s the camera that really matters here. The Galaxy K Zoom has a 10x optical zoom with a focal length equivalent to 24-240mm in the 35mm standard. This is a very flexible zoom length that’ll let you take shots of far-away objects far better than any other normal mobile phone. You operate the zoom using the pinch gesture or with the volume rocker.It’s a bit less than the 14x zoom of the Galaxy S4 Zoom, but this probably contributed to the new model’s slightly more accessible design. The aperture range is the same too – f3.1-6.3.
The sensor technology is pretty conventional, given the exciting-sounding tech Samsung introduced in the Galaxy S5. The K Zoom has a 20.7-megapixel BSI sensor, not the new ISOCELL type that Samsung announced last year.
Specs-wise it is similar to the S4 Zoom’s sensor. It’s 1/2.3 inch in size, but higher-res at 20.7 megapixels. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is similar to the sensor used in the Xperia Z2 – many of Samsung’s phones use Sony sensors.
The use of this size of sensor tells you the image quality to expect from the K Zoom – that of high-end mobile phones or mid-level compact camera. However, the phone also has optical image stabilisation, which should let it take decent photos in low light much more quickly than the Galaxy S5.
It also has a Xenon flash rather than the LED type seen in the vast majority of phones. Xenon gives more even coverage and better range – again, much better for low-light conditions.
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom – Camera App and Modes
The Galaxy K Zoom camera app is designed to cater for people who are out to be a bit adventurous with their photos, although not for real camera enthusiasts.There are loads of modes, more than you get with the Galaxy S5, but you can choose which ones go onto the top-level of the modes bit of the app. It needs a bit more curation than the other Galaxy phones, but the extra choice is (for the most part) warranted here.
Some of the more interesting modes you don’t get elsewhere include:
AF/AE mode – This lets you choose separate parts of the picture to act as exposure metering and focus points. It’s a great idea and a way for people to get more creative control over their shots without too much faff.
Pro Suggest - A bit of a weird one, this. Pro Suggest is an Auto mode of sorts that suggests which sort of Instagram-style filter you should use on each of your shots as you're shooting. The demo room I tried this out in didn’t let it shine, but I’m intrigued to see what it’ll come up with out on the street.
Manual – For a camera-focused phone, the Manual mode gives you surprisingly limited control over settings. You can pick shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation and ISO. However, you only have a few choices for each – in particular shutter speed options are very limited.
Selfie Alarm – This lets you pick a spot on the screen where you want your face to appear for selfies. It’ll then automatically take a pic when you’re in place, saving you from having to press the shutter button.
Keeping a fairly phone-like approach to shooting makes the Galaxy K Zoom’s photography dead easy. It’s a pretty good starting point for people who want to get a bit more involved in ‘real’ photography too, although don’t fool yourself you’re getting anything close to an SLR or compact system camera.
There’s one slight disappointment in the hardware controls. The Galaxy K Zoom has a physical shutter button but it’s not a proper two-stage one. Phones like the Lumia 1020 have a two-stage button that lets you control focusing and the shutter separately. But here any press seems to take a shot.
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom – Battery Life
We’re yet to see how many shots the Galaxy K Zoom can take off a charge. But we do know it has a 2,430mAh battery. That’s a good deal smaller than the 2,800mAh battery of the S5, and only a bit bigger than the 2,330mAh one of the S4 Zoom.However, there are spec disparities between both – the K Zoom has a smaller, lower-res screen, which should help level the playing field a bit. Still, the Xenon flash and motorised optical zoom are likely to eat away at the battery pretty quickly.
Early Impressions
The
Samsung Galaxy K Zoom is always going to be a bit of an oddball
compared with the Galaxy S5. It’ll never win that phone’s mainstream
audience, and it doesn’t really play to the crowd that’s seriously into
photography. However, it is a fairly logical pairing of a superzoom style compact with a Samsung Galaxy Android phone. And the new, more phone-like design makes it more accessible to use and hold on a day-to-day basis than last year's S4 Zoom.
Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/samsung-galaxy-k-zoom_Mobile-Phone_review#ogDEF2zY8BvVe40b.99
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