The Samsung Gear 360 VR camera was first unveiled in February this year by the tech giant at the Mobile World Congress. It’s availability since then has been like lightning during a storm, scattered and unpredictable. The Korean giant wants to change that now, however. The company dropped news via a press release that the low-priced VR camera it offers will hit the US markets on August 19, along with goodies like the new Galaxy Note 7 and the Gear VR headset.
Priced at an astonishing $350, the Samsung Gear 360 VR is one of the most affordable 360-capable cameras out in the market. The device competes with the likes of the Ricoh Theta S, 360fly’s 4K camera, Giroptic’s 360cam and Kodak’s SP360. The device was first made available in South Korea, this April. Extremely limited quantities of the camera were then sold at VidCon in Anaheim and Lollapalooza a couple of months ago.
This is all about to change now as Samsung will now set up shop in the US starting August 19.
The device weighs just 153 grams, making it a lightweight. The Samsung Gear 360 is a spherical camera with two F/2.0 fish-eye lenses. It is able to capture 195-degree photos and videos. These can then be stitched together to form a 360-degree picture. It allows photos of up to 30 megapixels to be captured.
It has an impressive Li-ion battery rated at 1350 mAh. This, the company claims can last for up to two hours. In terms of video, it supports “90 percent of 4K” for the whole sphere when you’re capturing images at the highest resolution (3840×1920). It can hold a microSD memory with a storage of up to 128 GB, which gives a lot of space for recording and storing.
Judging by this development, we can expect global shippings of the 360 camera to start by the end of this year. And that makes me very excited, but we have to wait and see how aggressively Samsung prices the camera.
