Regardless of how you feel about the concept, Samsung’s Galaxy Camera is finally making its way to the United States. AT&T has just announced it will it launch the curious camera on November 16 (i.e. this Friday), and that it will cost Google-devoted photographers $499 — that’s with or without a data plan.
In case you haven’t yet heard of the Galaxy Camera, think of it as a standard 16-megapixel point-and-shoot camera with a neat twist — it runs Android 4.1 Jelly bean, and sports a large 4.8-inch 720p LCD touchscreen that lets users fire up Android apps (ahoy there, Instagram!) and browse the web over Wi-Fi or a wireless data connection in addition to just framing shots. Under the proverbial hood lurks a 1.4GHz quad-core processor of unknown make (an Exynos chip wouldn’t be a surprise), and a 21x optical zoom lens rounds out this peculiar little package.
A curious combination for sure, but it’s not one that hasn’t already been seen before — Nikon beat Samsung to the punch with its Coolpix s800c.
It’s about time that AT&T came forward with availability — the Galaxy Camera made its first appearance last August at IFA in Berlin, and AT&T announced that it would carry the device early last month. At the time, the carrier found it prudent to keep quiet when it came to price and launch timing, though I have to wonder how many people were actually waiting on the edge of their seats for this thing to hit store shelves.