By Mike Wheeler
We’ve banged on enough over the past couple of months about how smartphone cameras are catching up with their compact counterparts – case in point, Samsung’s DV150F smart camera.
By Mike Wheeler
We’ve banged on enough over the past couple of months about how smartphone cameras are catching up with their compact counterparts – case in point, Samsung’s DV150F smart camera.
It gets the smart designation (we assume) from the ability of the device to shoot and share pictures via its wifi capabilities, while the DV stands for Dual View; this is because it has both front- and rear-facing LCDs.
Straight off the bat, its form factor is small. Really small. It is about two-thirds the length of your average smartphone, but twice as thick. This means it fits into the palm of your hand, your back pocket, or if your purse or man-bag.
There are a tonne of settings, but none that you would use often except the flash, the little zoom widget that sits nicely in front of the shutter button, and of course the wifi, which will allow you to forward your shots to your smart device. Setting up the wifi isn’t that hard but be aware you need a microSD card to get this function working.
Once the wifi has been set up it’s a case of point-and-click. The front LCD is 1.5-inches, and is there for the self-portrait, or to run an animation or similar while trying to attract the attention of little ones as you take a shot. The quality of the picture is okay, but you have to realise Samsung could only put a certain sized sensor in the device due to its size. Being 16.2 megapixels, it takes slightly better than some of the top-end cameras on some smartphones (LG’s Optimus G and Samsung’s own Galaxy S4 come to mind), but only just.
Where we were left disappointed was the lack of storage. We realise at this size something had to give, and we guess storage is it. Sure, there the aforementioned microSD card slot slipped in next to the battery slot, and it is wifi so you can forward shots onto your smartphone or PC, but to only be able to store two shots is pretty poor in our opinion. We just hope the sales assistant points this out when selling to the average punter.
Overall, our feelings are mixed on this one. It has a good price point for what it is, and will be popular with mums who love to take snaps of their kids and share them around with family and friends on social networking sites. However, as mentioned, storage is an issue.
Pros: Small, good price, two LCDs
Cons: Lack of storage, pic quality could be better
3.7 Shacks Out Of 5
RRP
$177
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