- SAMSUNG GEAR 360 APP REVIEW FULL
- SAMSUNG GEAR 360 APP REVIEW ANDROID
- SAMSUNG GEAR 360 APP REVIEW PRO
Now regulars around here know that I don’t really cover the phone segment. And my guess is, that’s what Samsung is waiting for price-wise. However, we have the upcoming GoPro 360° action cam for consumers, likely dropping in April. If we talk normal pricing, that’d likely put it in the $399 price range, like many other 360° action cams. However senior reps I chatted with hinted that Facebook may be partially subsidizing it (similar to what appears to be going on with the Gear VR headset at $99, as Zuckerberg alluded to on stage). Nor any pricing, other than saying it’ll be market competitive in price. They did not have the cases on-hand though.įor a video walk-through of the unit, check out the below snippet I put together:įinally, there’s no release date available, beyond a vague ‘Q2 2016’ (so Apr 1st to June 30th). Interestingly, these were the same waterproofing specs that the new G7 phones have. For that you’ll need a separate waterproof case that Samsung is going to sell, which will give you IP68 waterproofing (1 meter deep for 30 minutes). It features a standard tripod mount, so you could easily mount it to a selfie stick or any number of 3rd party mounts for your helmet or other locale. So is the unit defined as an ‘action cam’? Well, sorta. I figure at some point some lucky (local) DCR reader will pick it up as part of a giveaway. After the event, all were to take one with them (the boxed one under the seat). Speaking of which, the thousands of media/journalists/partners/etc all found Gear VR units not only on their seats, but under their seats. Thus you rotate your head around and you see the portion of the video that you’re ‘looking’ at. When wearing the Gear VR headset with the Gear 360 cam content, you can view the video from the Gear 360 just as any other virtual reality headset. They (Facebook) plan to roll this out over the coming weeks. This is actually rather important – because it’s been one of the challenges of 360° video playback. So basically, they re-allocate the streaming bandwidth to focus on what you’re seeing at that moment, versus streaming the entire video (portions you aren’t looking at) at higher quality. Speaking of which, Facebook touted their partnership and specifically their upcoming switch to ‘Dynamic Streaming’, to ensure that the portion of the 360° video you’re looking at is ~4X higher in resolution/clarity than before. On the flip-side, their heavily touted partnership with Facebook (Zuck was on-hand) and the desire to drive sales to the $99 Gear VR, make it a possibility we’ll see more focus there. History tells us that Samsung connected accessories tend to be Samsung-only, so I wouldn’t expect to see that change here.
SAMSUNG GEAR 360 APP REVIEW ANDROID
The unit streams video to Samsung Galaxy S7/S7 Edge phones, but Samsung wouldn’t clarify yet whether it’ll work with other Samsung phones – or even non-Samsung Android phones (let alone iOS devices). As for any given individual view, Samsung reps on-hand noted that it’s going to basically be 1080p. It’s somewhat odd they didn’t find a way to bridge that tiny resolution gap, and give them the marketing perception benefits associated with 4K branding. In the case of the Samsung Gear 360, the total video resolution is a smidgen under 4K, at 3840 x 1920 (4K is 3840 x 2160).
SAMSUNG GEAR 360 APP REVIEW FULL
Thus when companies talk about a 4K action camera, you need to ask: Is any given view 4K? Or just the full resolution of the 360° image? If it’s the full resolution, that’s not so exciting. So you really need to divide it up quite a bit. That’s because those megapixels and resolutions are spread out across the entire 360° view around you. However, do keep in mind that anytime you talk megapixel or resolution numbers on 360° cameras, things get skewed really quick. The net of that is a still image size of 7,776 x 3,888px. The two cameras each have a 195° field of view, with the slight overlap being used for stitching the imagery together. The camera is capable of 30 megapixels via its combined 2x15MP cameras, each with an aperture of F2.0. The new Gear 360 cam is roughly the size of a nectarine, and fits pretty easily in the palm of your hand:
SAMSUNG GEAR 360 APP REVIEW PRO
This builds on the concepts they showed off at CES with their Project Beyond (which was aimed at pro photographers). Late into the presentation, they introduced their Gear 360 camera. Instead, I’m focused on the wearables (none this year), however as was the case of this year – the action cam. As is customary for my posts in the past from the event, I (mostly) ignore all the phone stuff. Tonight was the annual Samsung event at MWC, where thousands of media folk descend on the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona, situated along the waterfront, to see the latest Samsung gadgetry announced.