Last night I snapped a few shots in the glorious weather, a rarity on Dartmoor. Normally its foggy or raining!

I got back home and examined the photos. This is my second K Zoom so I was keen to see whether I had any lens issues. The below shot is an enhanced HDR version using Snapseed.

And one last shot from the collection of a few hundred taken last night.

Now the above photos are slightly compressed for the article, but the detail didn’t seem to be all there. I was cursing thinking I had a faulty Zoom and would have to send back this one for an exchange. And then, it dawned on me. When I had taken the shots for the other post for today, I dropped the resolution camera settings to just 2mp.

So actually, the K Zoom even at 2mp can snap some lovely photos. So if you do change the settings, be careful to change back to your normal default options.

I really am so impressed with this phone/camera. But it does have weaknesses. My feelings about this device are consistent in that its extra weight and thickness don’t matter. Why? Because its curved back make it excellent to hold and it is a good size for one handed use. The 720p screen is ok but having used the best 1080p screens on the HTC One M8 and Samsung Galaxy S5 sometimes I do wish it was higher. However, as the screen is 720p I have not got from Google Play store and apps/games that can’t be installed as not compatible with phone. Speed of the K Zoom. Generally it is responsive and nippy. But I do have 92 apps installed, 20 of which are games, and at some point lag does appear or the odd slow down. Being honest I thought it would be a lot worse but it is perfectly acceptable.

But my biggest frustration is its wireless capabilities. It has bluetooth, wifi and more. But it appears its signal strength on for wifi, bluetooth and cellular signal are not as strong as other phones I have owned. This means wifi can drop at the further point in my house, whereas my other devices hold the wifi signal just about. Bluetooth stereo audio breaks up a lot and the phone signal strength is 15% weaker than other modern flagships I have owned. And sometimes, the Bluetooth connection is perfect. It is just not reliable. Maybe a software update will help. In the meantime, the bluetooth issue is out of all the wireless options is driving me mad at times. If this can get fixed, then I would be very happy.

Before I bought the K Zoom, I thought the 8gb internal memory would be the number one reason I would not keep this phone. In fact, I am managing with 8gb internal (about 4.6gb user available) and with 92 apps installed have 1.96gb free currently.

Of course, you buy this phone for the camera with its 10x optical zoom and xenon flash. And as the camera is a key feature for me, there is no other phone on the market at present that rocks my boat. Once you have the option to optically zoom in, you just cannot live without it.

I’ve been slightly distracted as I’ve had the Sony Xperia Z2 in the house.

However,  I’ve still been using the K Zoom to try and improve the user experience for me and also solve some of the battery drain issues.

Let’s start with the battery drain issues. I thought the high temperature had caused the battery to plummet but actually I’m now seeing if the new version of SwiftKey is the cause. I was using Google keyboard which worked really well but my typing speed on SwiftKey is seriously fast. When I’ve had a few more days usage I will report back. I did turn off swiftkey trending in the app settings and this seems to have helped a little.

One of the  phones widgets is the camera widget. I thought it had the fixed Pro Suggest camera launch mode and then 6 app options user selectable. Then by accident I realized it moved to reveal another 6 boxes for adding more apps.

As you can see my selection is all photo editing related. I just wish you could select which mode to launch the camera.

Bluetooth music streaming with my AKG K845 headphones is still not consistent with many dropouts. Fortunately, these headphones can also be used wired.

I now have a cheap eBay case for the phone, all of £2.90. But still no case from Samsung which was promised as part of the pre order.

I think despite a few issues I’m having with this device it is by far brilliant for my needs and is going to be near impossible to change this for anything else as my main driver.

Just a warning – this post might take a little longer to display the photos as they are the full res. Click on them to reveal full resolution.

I was in Bristol yesterday and it was 25 degrees with intense sunlight and consequently the K Zoom got hot in my pocket. It also discharged the battery considerably quicker and whilst in my shirt pocket which meant that from 8am to 5pm the battery dropped to 25%. Bear in mind I only took 20 photos, and for the rest of the day was in a training course, only looking at the phone screen a few times during the day. Clearly heat impacts the battery!

Below are 4 photos taken yesterday. I would like your views on them please, good or bad or indifferent.

All had been going well with the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom apart from some day 1 teething problems.

Well I had the pleasure the other day of taking the train from Exeter to London Paddington and then commuting across the sauna of the London Underground. In fact the train to London was too hot as well.

Anyway, I decided to listen to a few podcasts, and then play a few songs. My music is stored on the memory card. I was using the default Samsung music player. After about 20 minutes the track started stuttering. I was surprised by this behaviour so forwarded to the next track and then the next. Same problem.

The stuttering was only cured by performing a soft reset.

The battery life for the duration of my day trip to London held up really well. How by 11.39 PM and down to 34%.

The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom really is a niche device.

How niche?

Well twice I’ve phoned Samsung support and on the first call not only did they not know or even have heard of the phone, it wasn’t even listed in their computer so they had to call me back.

And that was even after I gave them the model number as well.

The second call was the same affair.

Now if you ring Samsung and have a S5 there is a dedicated extension!

However, both times Samsung support did call me back once they worked out how to resolve the problem.

Now for those that pre ordered the K Zoom with the offer of the free case which has not arrived nearly two weeks after phone arrived, I should have the answer tomorrow from Samsung as to where these free cases are.

Another day another discovery on the K Zoom.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S5, I kept the default Samsung keyboard as it worked really well, plus the numbers row doubled up as shortcut text when long pressed.

However, the K Zoom default Samsung keyboard is awful. I am waiting for Swiftkey to release their official version with emoji support, but it is not there yet. So I installed the official Google Keyboard. And oh my, it really works so well on the K Zoom. Swyping across the keyboard one handed is a breeze and it is so accurate. Make the user experience so much better.

That’s it for now.

More tomorrow.

Yesterday, my wife and I spent the day at the Royal Cornwall Show. I was armed with my Samsung Galaxy K Zoom and my wife with her trusty iPhone 5S. Both good phones for photography.

Apart from the photo taking side, the phones were used throughout the day for all the usual tasks.

Statistics – after 104 photos, the iPhone 5S battery was in a poor state, and to stop it dying completely was put in to flight mode. The Samsung Galaxy K Zoom was up to 500 photos and still had 44% battery. In fact the K Zoom took 700 photos at the show, and by my reckoning it was good for 1,000 shots on a full charge.

Of course, unlike the 5S, the K Zoom is necessary could have been placed into Ultra Power Saving mode to provide another 1.2 days worth of basic smartphone usage.

Photo quality – we were sitting in the grandstand taking photos of the show jumping and driving events. My K Zoom blew the iPhone 5S photos out of the water. I had 680 good shots, which I then narrowed down to the best 150. I have posted a few below.

All I can say, is the K Zoom is an amazing piece of kit. It has weaknesses. But if you always want a photographic or video memory of reasonable quality, this is the phone I would recommend was in your pocket.