Samsung Galaxy K Zoom Is the Smartphone for Selfie Addicts

Even though smartphone cameras have improved a lot over the years, there's one feature that "real" cameras still hold over them: an optical zoom. That is, unless your phone happens to be the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, which has a lens that extends from the back of the camera to bring distant objects up close.

How close? The lens magnifies up to a decent 10x, or pretty much exactly the same as last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom, Samsung's first attempt at an optical zoom-equipped smartphone. However, where the S4 Zoom was a bulky mess that barely fit in a pants pocket, the Galaxy K Zoom is more phone than camera phone.

At 7 ounces and 0.80 of an inch thick, the K Zoom is impressively compact considering the technology on board. Samsung managed to squeeze more optics into a smaller body by having two of the multiple lenses swing into place only when the zoom is extended; when in standby, they're off to the side. The end result isn't quite as svelte as the Nokia Lumia 1020 — whose most notable feature is its 41-megapixel camera (with no optical zoom) — but it's pretty close, even if it still looks a little silly to hold up to your head.

I got a chance to try out the Galaxy K Zoom, and it walks the line between phone and camera better than anything I've seen before. The textured plastic back, which is based on the Galaxy S5, helps you get a confident grip, and it looks nice, too.

Samsung also designed the dedicated shutter button smartly: It's right where it should be on the lower-right side of the phone, but it's not so sensitive that you might accidentally extend the lens while it's tucked away. ("Is that a Galaxy in your pocket...?")

The display is a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED screen, just a bit smaller than the 5.1-inch display on the Galaxy S5.

When you're using it as a phone, you'll forget it's a camera, too, but since all camera controls are on the display (apart from shutter and zoom), you'll never mistake the Galaxy K Zoom for a DSLR, or even a point-and-shoot.

Samsung put in a few new camera features in the K Zoom, one especially for selfie addicts. The Selfie Alarm lets you select the area of the frame where you want your head to appear; then when you turn the camera around, it'll play a tone when everything's lined up, snapping the pic a few seconds later. In practice, it's still an inferior process than just having a front-facing or articulating LCD (like the Samsung NX Mini has), but it's better than nothing. (For the record, there is also a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.)

The Galaxy K Zoom also provides extra help in navigating Samsung's plethora of "smart" modes, each of which adjusts camera settings for specific scenarios (e.g. "beauty face," "macro," etc.). In Pro Suggest mode, the camera will offer up several options for taking the best pic of what's on the LCD. You can download extras anytime, and enthusiasts can even create and upload their own for others to use.

And if you've ever been annoyed that the subject you're focusing on has a completely different exposure than the rest of the shot, you'll love that the K Zoom lets you separate autofocus (AF) from auto exposure (AE). That'll be a big help with people who are backlit, for instance.

As a camera, the Galaxy K Zoom holds its own against point-and-shoots, but compared to most other smartphone cameras, it's in the top of its class: Besides having the otherwise unattainable 10x zoom, the K Zoom shoots 20.7-megapixel photos and captures 1080p video at 60 frames per second. The lens includes optical image stabilization to reduce blur from camera shake, and the flash is Xenon rather than LED, which usually gives more natural light.

Before I forget — this is a smartphone, too. The processor is a "hexacore" design, with two 1.7GHz cores and four running at 1.3GHz. It has 2GB of RAM, and runs Android 4.4 KitKat. Like the Galaxy S5, the K Zoom has an ultra power-saving mode, which shuts off everything but essential functions, and turns the screen black and white.

The Galaxy K Zoom might be the best camera-phone hybrid Samsung has produced, although I miss the excellent "dial" manual controls from the original Samsung Galaxy Camera. Clearly the K Zoom camera experience is modeled after the one in the Galaxy S5, which surprisingly doesn't ruin it — although if you're buying a phone for its camera, you'll probably have a higher tolerance for confusing settings screens.

Samsung will roll out the Galaxy K Zoom globally, starting in May. There is currently no information about a U.S. release.