Is Lo-Mob going to be on Android? Yes. And the following is one of the reasons why.
Back in January 2012, at CES in Las Vegas, Polaroid unveiled what seems to be the first SmartCamera.
At Aestesis, we’ve thought about such cameras for a long time: A decent compact point and shoot, but freed from a crappy manufacturer OS, sporting something popular like iOS and Android. Of course, chances were that it would be Android.
We had this idea first when Sony finally released its NEX line. The press was kind of unanimous: the camera was great, in term of sensor, technology, picture quality, nut the OS was so bad it rendered the whole thing unbearable. I own a compact Sony camera with a touch screen and that’s true, the OS is horribly messy, dozens of icons everywhere, you’re searching for a particular mode for minutes and often fail to find it. Also, the pictures features proposed are way perfectible. Black and white is sadly not contrasted and FX’s are very poor and limited. It’s often the case on such cameras.
Sony NEX line, extremely good cameras with a disappointing OS
So we wanted the best of both worlds : a decent compact camera, from a popular manufacturer, with a decent lens and a good sensor (I mean way better than the optic and sensor of a smartphone), and a popular OS like Android, so you can get the benefit of all these apps, to treat and share your pictures. Because of course, it would be connected. WiFi is enough, 3G would be a plus.
And Polaroid unveiled the SC1630. We immediately regreted the name but this feeling was wiped by the very nice design and the very big potential of this device. And to say the truth we’re kind of happy it comes from such a legendary brand like Polaroid.
The first Smart Camera, by Polaroid
The Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera has a 800×480 3.2-inch display, and it features a whopping 16-megapixel camera capable of 3x optical zoom on a 36-108mm lens. When connected to Wi-Fi, users can instantly upload their images to social networking sites and will also even have access to the Android Market. It sports an aperture ranging from F3.1 to F5.6, an ISO of up to 3200, and can record 720p video with anti-shake support. It has a micro SD Slot, and a GPS for geotagging pictures and other navigation applications. Oh, it’s also a phone, and news sites already say it’s a bad one, but we honestly couldn’t care less about the phone feature (the first version to be released seems to be a sans-phone one).
In Polaroid’s own words:
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 10, 2012 - Polaroid today announced that capturing and sharing high-end digital images is now seamless with the Polaroid SC1630, an Android powered smart camera. The Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera features a high definition 16 megapixel camera with built in 3X optical zoom, touch screen display and Wi-Fi, making uploads to social networks as easy as the touch of a button. Merging the optics of a digital still and video camera with the limitless power of the Android platform, the Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera evolves the process of clicking, editing, uploading and tagging to an instant experience on one device.
So yes, it’s going to be good pictures, and Facebook, Instagram… Lo-Mob of course! How motivating this thing is for us to come to the Android world!
Polaroid SC1630 should be available in a sans phone version at the beginning of April at a price around $299.
There’s not much to read about this pretty toy on the net. When we link to a photo related site, we like it to be good, so here is a link to dpreview.com:
