Samsung Galaxy K Zoom

The basics

Are you ready to ditch your point and shoot for just a cameraphone? Samsung's betting on you carrying around only one gizmo that does it all with its lens-heavy, camera-orientated Galaxy K Zoom, the successor to last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom. Can it stack up to well-established phone snappers like Nokia's top-notch Lumia 1020, or will you still need to carry around your dedicated camera? We took one for a spin to find out.

The good

Last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom had plenty of things right with it, mostly in the camera department, but it was simply far too big to really fit in your pocket. This time around, Samsung's slimmed things down with the K Zoom, all thanks to a handy retractable lens, making it much more capable of fitting in even the skinniest of jeans.

The star of the show is the K Zoom's retractable camera lens that pops when you launch the camera app or hit the dedicated shutter button, and it extends out to 24mm to help you frame the perfect shot with the phone's 20.7-megapixel sensor. That's a boost from last year's 16 megapixel snapper, and the result delivers you some brilliant snaps. You're also given some hefty zooming skills thanks to the lens, as it extends out to 240mm giving you a 10x magnification, which can even be extended to 20x thanks to digital processing - but we wouldn't suggest using it often, as the quality drops. Samsung has also included a bright xenon flash and optical image stabilisation, plus a range of image shooting options to suit any photographer.

As a phone, the K Zoom performs well, thanks to Samsung's own nifty Exynos 5 Hexa processor which has six cores packed in - a 1.3GHz quad-core processor for your regular activities and a 1.7GHz dual-core processor for more grunt - along with 2GB of RAM, which makes it run smoothly along. We found no problems with our daily tasks and it handled intensive apps with aplomb.

The bad

Samsung's slimmed down last year's model with the K Zoom, but it's still very bulky. It measures up a hefty 20mm at its thickest point, more than double than LG's flagship G3, and it also weighs up at 200g, making it not the easiest blower to cart around. Thanks to all the tech it's got packed in, there's not much room for its battery, which it also chomps through quickly. You'll be lucky to last a whole day with the K Zoom, and you'll have to charge it up at least every day.

We're also disappointed by the K Zoom's screen: it's a paltry 720p display that measures up at 4.8-inches, which simply doesn't do any justice to the photos it can snap, and it's very over saturated too. Unlike the Galaxy S5 that it shares a lot of its DNA with, some of the most useful features don't make an appearance here: you won't find a fingerprint scanner or any waterproofing, meaning you may be shy to break it out if it's raining.

It's also loaded up with Android 4.4 KitKat, but it does have Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, which tends to get in the way and grants you an exceedingly long settings menu - we'd suggest to load up your own launcher instead. Samsung has also only included 8GB of storage space onboard, which is not a lot if you're planning on taking a lot of snaps - but there is a microSD slot that can handle up to 64GB cards.

The bottom line

Samsung has largely improved on last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom, cranking up its camera skills and dropping its huge heft, but it's simply still a tank of a phone. Despite its top-notch camera, the rest of the specs don't match up to its £400 price-tag. Samsung has tried to deliver the best of both camera and phone, and unfortunately, it just doesn't match up.

- See more at: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/review/samsung-galaxy-k-zoom#sthash.PQO24JzA.dpuf