Samsung Launching Camera-Centric Galaxy Zoom Smartphone?

Samsung is rumored to be working on a new smartphone called the Galaxy Zoom that will have a focus on the camera and imaging technology. There’s still not much information known about this smartphone, besides its model name and the fact that it will support a 16-megapixel imaging sensor, which will be a first for Samsung in a smartphone, though it’s unclear how big the sensor size will be. Samsung had used the Android operating system and a 16-megapixel sensor on its Galaxy Camera smart camera so potentially it could use the same sensor, which would be slightly larger than a traditional smartphone camera sensor, on the Galaxy Zoom to showcase that device’s imaging prowess.

The phone is expected to launch this summer in June or July and could come in black and white color options.

As far as imaging goes, Samsung will likely need to introduce new hardware and features to compete against Nokia’s PureView camera technology that is on the Windows Phone 8-powered Lumia range. The Lumia 920 ships with PureView 2.0, focusing on low-light photography and steady shake-free video thanks to an optical image stabilization engine.

HTC’s One flagship also makes similar claims through an Ultrapixel camera technology, which uses a 4-megapixel sensor to allow more light to pass through rather than competing in the megapixel war. And a rumored Nokia Lumia EOS smartphone would be bringing a much larger camera sensor packed with 41 megapixels to the Windows Phone range.

The Galaxy Zoom is also expected to come with a qHD resolution screen, so unfortunately you won’t be getting an HD panel to view your photographs on.

A 4.3-inch display, 8 GB of storage, micro SD expansion card, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, WiFi a/b/g/n, A-GPS, and Android Jelly Bean round out the specs that we know. Samsung will also load its TouchWiz user interface on the phone according to Sam Mobile.