Samsung Dualview TL225 Digital Camera: A Gimmick?
The problem Samung faces with its new Dualview Digital Camera is whether people are going to see it as a gimmick or actual innovation. Innovation to me is Apples iPhone interface – and so can a dual LCD truly update a cameras functionaility from good to excellent? Well lets take a look.
The camera itself has a lovely feel to it and is surprisingly grippy. It is housed in a well built and sturdy case which unfortunately houses a Micro SD/SDHC Card slot which left me wondering whether I can take this camera seriously.
The user interface is a touch screen and is fairly responsive – as always it attracts fingerprints but not as much as mobile phones do on the whole (if you are not a touchscreen fan I do not recommend this camera). I should also let you know that the rechargeable battery has to be charged from within which I just find frustrating (this can be remedied by purchasing a third party charger/adaptor).
Picture quality is good and the camera has a fairly high quality lense. This camera (and after fiddling with it) appears to be primarily focused on point and shoot with the controls adapting to this feature well – I like this as most compact cameras are actually purchased for point and shoot situations anyway (clubs, pubs and with friends).
The controls can seem very confusing at first if you want to dwell deeper into its functions and so a good manual reading session is recommended. You can just turn on and point and shoot but wheres the fun in that?
Below ISO400 this camera performs very well but above ISO1600 performance begins to lag with a slower shutter speed and a more noisy clikety clack.
I actually like this camera though, after using it for 3 hours I got the hang of it and was away. I summed up that it is better than a lot of compact cameras at what it does (point and shoot)- however I find the front LCD to be a gimmick.
It has recieved some rave reviews with people calling it ‘innovative’ and ‘special’ however I see it as a little bit pointless. Sure if you are out and want to take a photo of you and friends it is useful, but for 99.9% of the time it is a lost function i’m afraid.
Like it? Buy it. I don’t not recommend it – it is I suppose unique and for that reason I also am sure that it shall fly of the shelves this Christmas. It sells for around £250 – £300 at the moment (best price) which is expensive for a compact camera which isn’t semi-professional :/ but then again what other cameras have a dual LCD?
PS: Did you like this post? If so, be sure to leave a comment below.
Thanks for the review. I’m a Canon fan myself, but I’m also an iPhone fan, so I’d be curious to see if a decent touchscreen interface could make the camera experience any better/easier. Somehow though, I doubt a lot of companies other than Apple and a few others would actually get the touch interface ‘right’.
The front mounted LCD is a nice feature IMO. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like asking others to take pictures of the wife and I while on vacation, First, I don’t trust them to take a decent picture the way I want, but it’s probably more that I’m afraid the person is going to take off with my camera! I have a Canon PowerShot S5is prosumer camera, and the tilt/swivel LCD is in my opinion a killer feature that I will probably insist upon in any future prosumer (or pro) camera I purchase in the future. But the tilt/swivel LCD would add too much bulk to a point and shoot, which I prefer as small and pocket sized as possible. In this case, I think Samsung’s solution does the trick quite nicely. Too bad Canon doesn’t offer a compact point and shoot with a front-mounted LCD…
Oh, by the way, you got it backwards. The DVORAK keyboard layout came after QWERTY and was meant to be an improvement or innovation over the traditional QWERTY keyboard layout which believe it or not was actually designed to make people type slower to avoid typewriter jams. Unfortunately, given how much effort it is to learn to type well on any keyboard, DVORAK (or any other better keyboard layout) just never managed to get any traction in the market. Reminds me of the OS market! lol
Awesome thank you. I have updated the post – I too hate asking people to take pictures of my fiancee and so in that sense It is okay – but truly this is a gimmick haha. Thanks for the comment
Good article, thanks a lot!