Nikon Coolpix S800c at a glance:
- 16-million-pixel, back-illuminated CMOS sensor
- Equivalent 25-250mm Nikkor lens (10x optical zoom)
- Android enabled (Gingerbread 2.3)
- 3.5in, 819,000-dot OLED touchscreen
- Built-in GPS
- Lens-shift vibration reduction
- Street price around £340
Nikon Coolpix S800c review – Introduction
Smartphones are truly popular with photographers, thanks in no small part to their pocketability and multi-purpose functionality. Web access for instantly sharing photos is clearly useful, as are photography apps. Most importantly, the built-in cameras are getting better. DxOMark recently put on its website (www.dxomark.com) an article claiming the best smartphone camera has better image quality than high-end compact cameras of five years ago. Such devices have therefore put, dare I say it, one-trick-pony consumer-level compact cameras under serious threat.
Nikon was the first to announce the launch of a ‘smart camera’ that uses the Google Android OS (operating system) in the form of its Coolpix S800c, pipping the Samsung Galaxy Camera. Unlike the Samsung camera, there is no sim card in the S800c, which means no mobile data network or a contract to pay each month. Instead, Wi-Fi is used for photo sharing, web browsing, emails and access to the Google Play store for downloading applications. The S800c offers most of the advantages of a smartphone, but it is at its heart a consumer compact camera.
