Samsung Electronics Co. on Wednesday revealed the Galaxy S4 zoom, the latest model of its flagship Galaxy series, which is a cross between a camera and a smartphone.

The unconventional gadget features a high-end smartphone while also embedding a quality camera, according to information Samsung released to the U.S. media.

Up front, the Galaxy S4 Zoom looks like a smartphone, equipped with the Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean” operation system, a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED 960x540-pixel screen, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8 GB of internal memory, and a micro SD card slot for up to 64 GB more capacity.

Flip it around, and a 16 megapixel camera emerges, armed with 35 mm-equivalent focal length range of 24-240 mm. The Galaxy S4 zoom also boasts ISO sensitivity ranging from 100 to 3,200, coupled with a flash and a 1.9-megapixel camera on the front suitable for video chat.

It is considered to be a significant step up from its de-facto predecessor Samsung Galaxy Camera, the South Korean tech giants’ first Android-based camera. It was a compact camera with a 21x optical zoom and 4.8-inch screen but it could hardly qualify as a smartphone.

Samsung has yet to announce a release date for the Galaxy S4 zoom in Korea.

The phone will become available in Britain this summer, and released in the U.S. and the rest of Europe in the fourth quarter.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)