Phone cameras were WAY ahead of its time back then, we are already in 2024 with basically the same features with quad-bayer "high mp" sensors, phone camera innivation pretty much stagnated. Except for sony with their xperia lineup.
Once again a reminder that no matter how good the software gets, physical lenses are just really awesome. Sub 100 compact cams with real optics from 10 years ago can still make better zoom pics than modern phones for 1500 bucks.
Have you actually looked at large prints to say that? Granted this is a phone with compact camera put on it so it is not direct comparison with phones that we had back then but still I highly doubt it has the performance of a modern phone at least in unedited mode
@@shawonahmed5775 Yep and it will never be able to do a 9x zoom, or a 6x zoom or a 15x zoom as everything is fixed to one focal length. These cheap digital cameras are able to go for the full range (24mm-200mm and everything in between) whereas the phone cameras are fixed permanently at a certain focal length and have to use digital zooming to achieve all these other focal ranges.
It is and it isn't - if it was just a normal long exposure, the entire image would become progressively lighter, this works in a vaguely similar way to how the 'live composite' mode works in Olympus cameras, where it takes a base exposure then progressively adds only the very lightest parts of the image (like lights, stars etc) over a period of time while keeping the base exposure the same. Pretty crazy to see that in a phone really!
@@FuzzWoof Hm, maybe, i did similar photos with my Canon EOS350D, and i dont remember encountering such a problem. Maybe i took the photos in Tv mode(Exposure priority). And i agree about the phone. I have my Canon 70d record 1080p 30fps videos, and it's kind of crazy to see a mobile phone do that
I just wish Samsung would do a revival with todays technology. Imagine what would be possible. 40x optical Zoom; 8k 60fps; 4k 240fps; 1080p 720fps combined with Galaxy AI.
Few years after S4 zoom, motorola launch the Moto Z, where you could attach a camera module on it. Also 10x zoom but with 4k videos. That was a sick design. Where people could buy mods what they wanted to improve their phones. Wish samsung do something like that nowadays, with huge zoom and DSLR quality for galaxy.
@@heitorlgfThat smartphone failed because nobody wants to spend extra 200-300 dollars on the 600-800$ smartphone. Very few people who bought DSLR have lenses other than stock 50mm and telescope/zoom lens.
When the S4 Zoom first came around, I remember always wanting one, I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, but I wasn't able to get it anywhere in the UK. At the time I had an iPhone 4S, that I eventually changed for a regular S4, and the screen unlocking sound is so nostalgic to me, even if it was only a decade ago!
They could never get away with this kind of stuff today, it's not aesthetically presentable and the moving parts pose a huge risk - which is exactly why they started adding multiple cameras instead. And digicam enthusiasts are really a niche audience that are just going to buy actual digital cameras anyway. Everyone already has a main phone, and this is simply not fit to be used as one.
@@Neopumper666 One thing that I would like to highlight this was that this was a continuous optical zoom. At the moment, anywhere between 3X and 10X ,say 7.5x, is pic from 3x cam digitally zoomed in
@@methamphetamememcmeth3422 I mean, I did use the S4 Zoom back in the day as a secondary phone and it really is uncomfortably too thick. It's like pocketing a compact digital camera from the 2000s. The pictures it took were good, but I really didn't use the zoom feature often enough to justify having to carry this unwieldy bastard around everywhere. It just made me wish I had a normal sized phone with at least comparable image quality, but no crazy zoom to make it so big. And going back to the iPhone was exactly that.
man...this was when samsung was COOKING.I remember when this came out it blew my mind how cool the camera was. I like digital cameras but having a android phone combined with it made it incredibly useful. the Nokia 1020 was another crazy camera with a smartphone slapped on it (love for you to go over that too). Also YES I MISS THOSE LITTLE SOUNDS. I know some thought they were cringe back then, but they gave samsung so much more character than they do today.. Just the unlock sound gives me so much nostalgia.
@@heroninja1125 check out nothing phone! It's still a slab, but it looks like they are at least trying. I've just got the np(2) and I have a tone of fun with it's little quirks and weird features. Ohh, and the Flips are fun too! I had the Flip3 from Samsung for 1.5 year, and I absolutely loved it. It did have issues with the screen, but I believe the new ones have resolved durability to the point you can daily them for 2 years at least, and Samsung will replace the screen for free with extended warranty - only downside is that flips are an expensive business lol. On the other hand you have that Motorola razor that I think is like 700-800$? That's still expensive, but closer to a reasonable price, around flagship price.
Being able to change the battery was SO useful. When one was low you just swapped it out. Now you've gotta carry around a heavy external battery to charge up the battery in the phone. So much less inefficient. I saw plenty of people not knowing you could buy spare batteries though and would still be charging up the phone from an external battery.
@@PhazonBlaxor I think the EU only sais the batteries will have to be "easily removable" as in, you could use a screwdriver or something. Idk if most companies won't just do malicious compliance (apple 100% will) by finding some loop hole to still make removing the battery annoying.
@2727daqwid Actually, they also said batteries have to be easily replaceable with "no tool, a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part, or basic tools." So "easily" replaceable really means easily here.
I owned this phone back in the day and upgraded to Samsung's next iteration, the *Galaxy K Zoom* , which I loved. I also owned the Galaxy Camera which again was ahead of its time. Samsung simply did not promote these devices enough for them to be truly popular, which is a shame because they took amazing pictures.
This looks incredible. If Samsung made an S24 version of this, I'd be the first in line to by one. Modern smartphones have come some way toward making up for this lack of an optical zoom feature with dedicated 3X and 5X telephoto lenses, but this still seems better.
... You do realize that Samsung has already matched this thing's 10x optical zoom capabilities inside of a standard smartphone form factor with the S22/23 Ultra's periscope lenses, right??? O_o This form factor simply isn't necessary anymore for good optical zoom performance. Lens design and manufacturing has come a long, LOOOOOOONG way since this thing came out. This kind of phone design simply doesn't make sense anymore without a dramatic camera sensor size upgrade vs standard phones, and if you're doing that you're basically just going to end up with a full size DSLR running Android for its OS (which would be FLIPPIN' AWESOME, don't get me wrong!), not a smartphone with a zoom lens on it. 🤷
@@Cooe. Not quite. The S23 Ultra has a fixed 10X telephoto lens, but you can't precisely adjust it like you can with this phone. If you want full resolution at exactly 6.8X zoom, you can do that on this old phone. The S23 Ultra does not have that capability.
Those "old school" flashes were so much better, I remember being on nights out with my old Nokia cybershot and those kind of flashes would light up the whole club for a fraction of a second, so indoors in the dark with lots of movement you always got perfectly sharp and well lit photos, LEDs are nowhere near bright enough for that
I actually had one and I loved it lol... It was both my daily and my camera for streaming... I mean, a 1080p 30fps / 720p 60 fps cam is all you need even today... What made it better was the 64gigs of storage and the fact that you could add another 128 gig sd card. Even after upgrading I kept that phone as a travel cam until it fully died on me...
Give or take, but i am disappointed with the new cameras on the s24 series. They're wayyy too oversharpened and overprocessed to where the pictures aren't even natural anymore. They're flushed of colors, grainy and i even compared it to my s21 fe, and my s21 fe was better bc it didnt overprocess the photo. My s21 even picked up background text that even the s24 ultra just completely blurred on. I was more interested in the iphone 15 pro's camera as it is much more natural, still overprocessed but nowhere near as bad.
It's quite disappointing that samsung also lost their original way of look... The smartphones back in that day had an iconic body design... Like you would see a guy walking at a distance from you, holding his phone, and you would know it's a samsung as it had the centred squircle camera design with a similar flash, and the display had that iconic home button... And unlike the modern samsung phones such as A15, A35, A55, S24 etc.. which all have the same back layout.. old samsung devices had a bit of change in every device.. like you could tell if someone was holding a note series phone or an S series phone or something like a C9 pro or an old A7...
@@arkagamerk bro exactly. My mom has an a52 and it has the same exact plastic back as my s21 fe. An S series phone with plastic?? Samsungs quality is no longer what it used to be. Samsungs used to feel special, now it just feels like the same thing everyone has.
I think the most interesting thing to see is that while the pictures quality are really nice, there isn't that overprocessing looks of today's phones pictures. Honestly, I think it's so much better
man those android sounds bring back memories. my first higher end phone was the s4, it was a sprint phone that i had to flash the imei on so i could use it on boost. ah the wild west of modding phones i dearly miss.
u can do the light tracing trick on any phone just go to pro mode make ISO the lowest possible and lower the shatter speed so the phone will capture light for about 15 sec before generating the picture so that light trace is actually the positions that the car lamps were in that 15 secs
I was in college when this phone came out and my classmate had one. It was new and for some reason the lens got stuck and won't close no matter what so we went with her to some various repair shops to get it fixed but no one knew how to do it at that time. So I decided to borrow it from her and gently tap the lens against some steel bar while we were walking and it fixed it. 🤣 But despite it working again, she still had it replaced with an iPhone.
People are still using the old smartphones because they still work and it’s old technology that people love buying because old technology is worth more money
Now it just seems like smartphones are downgraded on purpose, pretending like the camera is 99% of the phone, when it's actually the processors & software that are to be desired.
In Korea, this was an interesting product, but not popular. However, I think that if the series had been released consistently with the current Samsung software ecosystem established, there would have been steady demand. Of course, the ideal product would be something like the current Ultra series.
Bro wtf this takes hands down better photos than my S22 WTF XD I need to get my hands on one of these on the second hand market xD I know there is another phone like this the Galaxy K Zoom, now I don't know if that's better or worse than this, but it looks very similar.
The camera on this phone is decent. why do some new phones that have high spec cameras suck. (yk the $300 motoroa or xiaomi with 64 mpx 8 cametas on the back lookin' like tryptophobia)
The innovation and experimentation in today's phones is so disappointing. This type of device today could blow away all the crappy multi-fixed-lens phones and replace all entry level cameras. The biggest advantage would be the operating system. 'Real' cameras are still so inconvenient when it comes to quickly editing and posting your work. I spend more time playing around in post than actually taking photos with my real camera, and that's not the fun part.
I had one. The camera definitely impressed me at the time, but the build didn't. It fell off my lap as I stood up & binned the screen. I'm talking screen completely black, no life & the repair bill was more than the phone was worth. I've dropped other phones from other manufacturers. Not one broke as easily as this. Next up was my Samsung mini. Screen binned due to me leaning against a beam whilst in a roof. That's whilst the phone was in a padded bag on my side. Needless to say, that was my last samsuck
I am still using my Galaxy S4 (in white) but not the Zoom... still works for me as I don't need anything fancy.. and I just had to change the battery a few months ago. lol Newer phones these days are way too big... and you can't beat that sound!
Unless you were directly recording from RU-vid app, what OS you use is irrelevant on how your uploads' video quality end up. You edit and render your video on your computer, and RU-vid does the uploading processing so your S20 FE does not do any additional processing to lower your video quality. You just got a phone with a better video quality.
Daniel, I’m impressed you watched so long 😂 both the s20 FE and the 13pro have similar 12Mp back camera before diving deeper though. mostly workflow is what it came down to with the iPhone- i still use Samsung on the daily
I've got the K-zoom. I really loved that phone. Actually still runs pretty smooth. Great condition too. The battery's kaput though and the OS is seriously OOD. I wish someone would release a custom ROM for it
i dont know how to explain it but... the way the photos are taken by the camera look like they are from the 2010s, and the videos it takens are reminiscent of late 90s to early 2000s , its a digital camera photo style. It looks so fun and punchy - even the ratio of the picture, like you can tell its not taken by a smart phone from the current era.
The light tracing is just long exposure. It just opens the sensor to light for like 10 seconds, so everything thats still stays still and everything that moves leaves a trail. The brighter a subject, the more that trail will be visible. So, car lights are the perfect subject
In 2013 I had the Samsung S4, for the time that was a pretty decent phone. But yeah camera tech on phones has now come a long way that we don't really need an entire dedicated 16mp camera in the phone :-)
Man, as others have pointed out, its amazing how much its held up for being a product of its time. It would definitely be cool to see an updated version of something like this with modern tech in a smartphone, just to see the results and how a mainly hardware supported camera system would compare to the AI infused software camera systems that are popular today. The only other example that i could think of that has done this with modern tech would be the xiaomi 12S Ultra concept phone which allowed you to install an additional lens on the rear cameras of the phone, just like a regular camera. I believe the quality was very good, but it was exceedingly expensive.
S4 Zoom is also unique in that, its one of THE most slim point and shoot cameras, its also got impressive lens for its size, the sensor is obviously dated, and to save costs, Samsung uses plastic glass in the lens, not proper crystal glass. But even then, a plastic glass is not too bad considering how small the sensor is. There is limitations to how small a lens you can make obviously but its such a shame that smartphones at least does not come with bigger prime lenses, I would love a proper 24mm, 50mm and a 70mm in a smartphone thats actually f1.4 and all 3 cameras have 2.3" sensors in them. Fujifilm actually made 2/3" sensor point and shoot digicams that were SUPER CCD, they also made two point and shoot cameras with their X-trans sensor in the 2/3" size, these are brimming good low light monsters, even today they shoot really amazingly good pictures for their size even at high ISO.
Imagine if either Samsung, Sony, Nikon, or Canon, made a new compact camera model, at an affordable prize, with good optics, but also with 2024 software simulare that what's used for smartphones. Now, THAT would be nice 🙂
Anyone who pulls up with the excuse that there's "no space" for things like expandable sd card slots needs to take a hard look at devices like this. This thing has a replaceable battery, sd card slot, shutter button, xenon flash module, headphone jack, a whole freaking compact lens and on top of all of this it's a fully functional phone with its own processor, screen and all, and it's much smaller than the phones of today.
Samsung was awesome back then. Now there's hardly 5x optical zoom,all done in computational manner now, on their flagship,with No Micro SD slot,and No dedicated shutter button and no tripod screw and No 3.5 mm jack as well. WTF happened to them. Now, only Sony Xperia mark smartphones gives it,and that at too much over priced product without the tripod thread,and it has no optical zoom like this one. Sensor is still old tech in that one and 1080p recording is now, standard with 4K recording available even in mine. Samsung really innovated in camera zoom hardware front, back then. They could have easily made s22 or s23 or s24, with optical zoom, just like this,but they chose,not to.
4:00 Ayeeeee!!! A fellow SLC'er! 😄 Also, there's practically nothing worth photographing on State Street. 🤷 Shit's mostly just a dump of rundown old buildings/businesses and fast food joints. Sorry, not sorry lol. 🤣 (Photographing the mountains instead = smart idea haha.)
Good phone camera . I us little movies filming moment. Photography no bad . Us app google play ... us prof Photography or movies ... Esay phone Samsung camera ... Today 2024 year price 5... 30 ... money👍😎
In 2013 i don't know about phones 😢😢😢 .. in 2015 my dream is j7 Max and in 2020 my dream is Huawei p30 pro in 2020 Sony ... but I am not bought any thing ... till using second hand Redmi note 7 Pro 😢😢
This is why I've always been a Samsung fan. Yea they fail sometimes or make some odd features but in general, they always try to progress the future of technology. Their older phones were so awesome for their time. Though Google and IPhone always catch up eventually and awesome in their own way. The Uniqueness of Samsung is why I've stuck with them
man why phones can't be like this, i would love to have a phone which is also a real camera with optical zoom! it would be really useful to capture things like concerts when you are far from the stage
Cant see a comment so, light tracing, i.e. long exposure, is where the shutter stays open for longer, and captures any movement of light in the same photo. This is true all the time, pretty much. The difference here is the shutter may be open for a few seconds, as opposed to the usual 1/50 or 1/100s, so hundreds of times longer. To do that, the shutter blades have to really narrow down so that the photo doesnt end up hot white (overexposed) to control the amount of light let in per second.
