SINGAPORE — The Samsung Galaxy Camera is not the first camera to include an Android operating system, but it is certainly the most interesting and sensible concept I have seen by far.

From the front, the Galaxy Camera looks like any regular camera but flip it around and it looks like an Android phone with a big screen. It has a 4.8-inch HD Super Clear Touch display, which looks and acts very much like Samsung’s Galaxy SIII. It is powered by Android 4.1, or Jelly Bean, and you can navigate through the apps as you would on a phone. You can also surf the Web, check your email and download and use apps from the Google Play Store via wi-fi and LTE (it uses a microSIM card).

You cannot text message or make calls on the camera but you can snap photos and upload them to sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter easily. Snapping pictures and sharing them is really a cinch. There are many wi-fi-enabled cameras on the market these days but the Android OS makes the Samsung Galaxy Camera easy to navigate — especially when it comes to adjusting settings and selecting photos to share.

Instagram fans, this is the ultimate Instagram camera for you as the quality of your shots will benefit from the better resolution photos taken with the camera. That is because the 16.3-megapixel camera has a 21x optical zoom and takes very good still shots.

Shots in natural lighting are well-balanced but its low-light performance was nothing to shout about. In short, the picture quality is about the same as what you get from an average point-and-shoot camera.

However, where the camera does stand out is in its “smart” shooting features: Samsung has matched the hardware with some interesting software features, including a “best photo” mode that will select the best of eight shots for you. There is also a “continuous shot” mode, which captures a series of photos.

You can also shoot 1080p video and capture still shots even as you are shooting video. On top of that, there’s an “Expert” mode for photographers who want manual controls for adjusting aperture, ISO, shutter speed and more.

But the Galaxy camera is not without its flaws. At 300g and almost 5-inches wide, it is much larger than the average point-and-shoot. It is closer in size to micro-four-thirds or mirrorless cameras like the Olympus E-PL5 or Panasonic GX1, which take noticeably better photos.

The other major sacrifice is battery life. With LTE, wi-fi, a quad-core processor, and that 4.8-inch screen, the battery drains fairly quickly. You get a much better battery life from a regular point-and-shoot or micro-four-thirds camera which let you take hundreds of shots on a single charge.

The Galaxy Camera is a neat gadget and it is a lot of fun to play with, especially if you like Samsung’s “smart” features. And the ability to share better-than-smartphone shots on the fly is great. However, having to charge a camera which cannot fit into your pocket twice a day while on holiday is not.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera retails for S$698 and is available at all Samsung authorised dealers.