I get it. It's easy to make fun of the Samsung Galaxy NX. With its large touch screen on the back and odd looking design. Then there's the thought that a camera that runs Android can't possibly be any good. I know. I thought so too.

This is the wildest thing. To use what is otherwise a normal camera, but running a smartphone operating system.

Being the nerdy person I am, I appreciated the Samsung Galaxy NX on release but it was never a camera I could consider buying. For one, there was the astronomical price. At $1,600 USD body only on release back in 2013 its peers were high-end DSLRs. But if you could get past the price there was the quirkiness. Could a mirrorless camera with a smartphone brain and mostly touchscreen controls really be that good to use?

Well it's a decade late and I decided to pick one up and see for myself. Boy am I surprised.

This is actually a great design

My first reservation for using the camera was the design of the body. I've used hacky mirrorless cameras before (Pentax K-01, I'm looking at you) and have not been a fan. At a quick glance the Samsung Galaxy NX looks like much of the same - style over function. But I was extremely surprised on unboxing the camera to find the ergonomics really well thought out and, well, great.

Besides a little bit of a futuristic design, the Samsung Galaxy NX doesn't look too unusual from the front.

You can tell the design team prioritized actually using the camera and not just staring at it. Thank you, whoever you are. The camera has a large and deep grip that only looks small because the depth of the whole body is small compared to other cameras. Equally important, at the rear of the camera there is a thumb rest that juts out to the side, offering incredible leverage while holding the camera. Top it off with the fact that the camera is relatively light and the weight is well-balanced, and you have a really nice feeling camera.

The Samsung Galaxy NX runs Android. Real Android.

The Samsung Galaxy NX isn't the first camera to run Android. A few Nikon point and shoots and Samsung Galaxy point and shoots were some of the first I found. Then there are some cameras that where some skin of Android. But the Samsung Galaxy NX was unique in that it was the first interchangeable lens camera to run full on Android, and still the largest sensor camera to do so (APS-C).

Testing this out made the nerd in me giddy. The camera boots up initially with a Samsung animation and then drops you into camera mode. A quick button switch and you're landed into the familiar smartphone homescreen with app icons. The Samsung Galaxy NX actually uses two internal processors: One dedicated to the camera, and the other to running Android. The switch between the two feels as seamless as my smartphone opening up the camera app.

While in camera mode the camera operates mostly like a smartphone camera. Almost all your controls are on the touchscreen. It's just much more photography focused than smartphone cameras native UI's. For example, familiar terms like Av and Tv are used on a virtual knob to switch into those priority modes. I found this system to work as good as any smartphone system, if not better simply because it offered much more control.

The major difference in camera controls is that of course you are using this touchscreen on the back of an otherwise traditional camera body. You do get a rear control dial that can be used in tandem with touching on things to quickly switch settings, or is left dedicated to some setting based on the mode you're in. You also have a physical shutter button, which I'm telling ya, makes a real difference in the photographic experience.

Don't forget the EVF

My first time shooting with this camera I completely forgot it had a viewfinder. I was so immersed in the idea of framing the shot like a smartphone and changing settings like a smartphone, that I forgot I had a more traditional way of doing so. The EVF is high quality for the era and works great when you remember to use it.

But there's a big problem with Android

Well, it's a problem with hardware and software technology generally, but Android suffers from it particularly bad. Otherwise perfectly good devices can be bricked because software is out of date, no longer supported, and refuses to be run.

An example of this in the photography world would be the Olympus Air A01, which I picked up for a bargain a few years ago. It's a camera sensor and a lens mount with a shutter button but no other screen or controls. Instead, you control the device with your smartphone. Pretty cool idea, except the app to control the camera was removed from the Google Play Store years ago.

Thankfully, there are backed up copies of the .apk file laying around the internet. Or, I found a copy of the app still available on the Amazon Fire store. Still, it about gave me a heart attack to release I bought something that may not work just because of software.

Same thing happened with the Rylo 360 camera. The first to offer absolutely fantastic digital stabilization. Someone bought the company out to use that tech in their action cameras, and the Rylo app was pulled from the Play Store.

Fortunately, for the Samsung Galaxy NX, the camera remains functional regardless of what is going on in the Android world. What is affected is app compatibility. Because the Android version is so old and refuses to update, most everything is missing from the Play Store due to compatibility. And then I found most of what is offered in the Play Store doesn't work anyway. Instagram won't even load in the browser, detecting an outdated browser that refuses to be updated.

So, there goes my hopes of loading up Google Snapseed or live streaming straight on Instagram from the camera. Well, for now at least. The goal now is to dig into some of these alternative app stores and see what I can make happen.

This limited ability to load apps does make the camera much less viable today though, so be warned.

Did I mention it has an APS-C sensor?

I cannot stress how wild it is to use a camera with a smartphone interface that has a large sensor and can use real lenses. Merging the two together actually works better than I thought, and even my more practical, non-nerdy side, is beginning to appreciate it.

Images have a lovely quality to them, and I'm just scratching the surface. It's easy to get distracted by the big screen and Android and miss the high-quality features this camera otherwise provides. 2013 was a great year for sensors, and what we have here is an incredibly capable photographic device. Resolution is great, colors are good, noise levels are good. It's just a good solid camera underneath the headlines.

Vintage lens compatibility with Samsung NX

There's some great news and some not as great news when it comes to adapting vintage lenses to a Samsung NX series camera.

Should I start with the negative or positive? Let's get the negative over with. It's not such a big deal anyway.

When building the Samsung NX mount, Samsung went with a rather long flange distance. The exact reason for this I am not too sure of, but in any case it does limit some vintage lenses from being able to be adapted and still hit infinity focus. It works great with M42 lenses, which is one of my favorite mounts to tap into anyway, so to me it's not a big deal. But maybe something to look into before grabbing a Samsung NX camera.

Because you may very well want to pick up a Samsung NX for adapting lenses. The features for doing so are really nice, especially for the era.

You get: No limitations on shooting a lens without contacts Various levels and settings for focus peaking Punch in zoom for confirming manual focus

And all of it works really smoothly. Well done, Samsung.

Lens system

Beyond adapting vintage lenses, the Samsung NX system had it's own set of lenses. Now third parties never jumped in on this, and Samsung only developed a handful of lenses, so there's not a ton out there. What they did develop covers a wide range of use cases though, so it's still a viable system to get into. If you can find the lenses, that is.

I think it would be amazing to try the Samsung 16mm f2.4 lens, or the Samsung 85mm f1.4 lens. We'll see how deep I go into this.

Also note that there is a Samsung NX mini system, and that's a different lens mount. There's even less lenses for that mount though, so it should trip you up too bad.

More to come

Hey, I am not done playing with the Samsung Galaxy NX, or the NX series for that matter. Look for more content including more picture samples in the future. In the meantime, enjoy the video I made on it and hopefully that introduction was fun.

Happy snappin' -james