LAS VEGAS — Samsung’s new CL80 compact camera is a curious machine. It is less like camera and more like a camera-phone, packing in everything you’d expect of a modern phone, except the phone itself.
Why? Try this feature list: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3.7-inch AMOLED touch-screen and an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. That sounds more like a high-end phone than a camera. Clearly Samsung has brought its phone experience to the game.
Of course, it’s not a cellphone, and the picture quality shows that. The sensor has 14.2 megapixels and can shoot 720p video. This is paired with a Schneider Kreuznach 7x zoom lens. Once shot, you can send the video and stills off to other devices via Bluetooth or DLNA (a Wi-Fi spec for easily sharing media between devices), upload to Flickr or YouTube over regular Wi-Fi or even email them direct, as the camera has a built-in address-book (I told you it was like a phone).
There are a few neat additions, too. The touch-screen and accelerometers let you control the camera by gestures — draw an “X” on the screen to delete a picture, or tilt to move between images. This last could be more annoying than helpful if it is still as bad as the slideshow feature on the Samsung Behold cellphone.
Last, and funniest, its the balancing “function”. The bottom of the 0.7-inch steel case is angled so the camera can be tilted back at 7-degrees and balance there. This will tilt the lens up just enough so you can take a self-portrait without chopping off your head. The CL80 will be in stores in the Spring, for an as-yet unannounced price. If you are the kind of person who loves to play with a feature-packed gadget, this is probably the best camera you could choose.
CL80 Press release [Samsung]
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