While tablets and smartphones offer tons of bells and whistles that include standard camera options, the Samsung Galaxy is a camera first and foremost, but with the Android Jelly Bean operating system installed, it also offers the convenience of a smartphone--without the calling features, of course. 

After pulling the device out of the box, I realized how accustomed I had gotten to the slim iPhone. This camera is definitely bigger (hello, it is a camera) and not something meant to easily slip in my pocket, but it's easy to forget at first. Looking at the huge, nearly 5"  touchscreen on the back with all the app icons makes you realize what an amazing hybrid innovation this is.

When it comes to taking pictures, all of the controls are located on the touchscreen (with the exception of the flash, zoom and power). Speaking of zoom, the Samsung Galaxy Camera gets way closer than any smartphone camera, which has always been one of their biggest limitations. Lots of parents will find this handy when stuck in the last row of the school play. 

Of course the big lens in the front is the obvious giveaway that it's a camera and not a smart phone or mini tablet--and also why the results are so good.

As with any camera, you can shoot auto or manual, plus there's also a Smart mode option with the standard pre-sets, including a super cool one called Best Face which selects the best faces for each person in a series of consecutive pictures and puts them into one single picture. I can see that coming in handy for holiday photos when I end up taking about a thousand anyway. And of course, there are in-camera editing options to help you fix things red-eye, color, saturation, basically anything you'd use a separate photo editing app to correct. 

Another cool thing? Instead of depressing the shutter to take a picture, you can also speak to it and say "shoot" to get it to take the shot. Voice-controlled camera taking? Wow! And it also shoots HD video as well.

But what really makes this camera so innovative is that it connects via 3G/4G and Wi-Fi networks. So, you have the image quality of a 16 megapixel camera plus the convenience of being able to share your professional-looking pictures instantly. No more downloads or wires--not even a wireless memory card is needed.

Since it runs Android and connects to Google Play, you can download apps for web browsing, connect to all your favorite social networks, and save photo apps like Instagram and Flickr. And if you have a Samsung Galaxy tablet or a Samsung laptop, there are apps that let you automatically push all your images directly to your devices, kind of like iCloud does for Mac users. 

All in all, this really is a great camera, has tons of options and let's face it, just looks really cool. But--and here's the but--it's not cheap as you might expect. The camera itself is $499, which is comparable to other high-quality hybrid digital cameras with long zooms, and a little less than an entry-level DSLR. But if you want to take advantage of the smartphone qualities and have that always-on connectivity to share those Annie Lebowitz shots with your friends and family, you'll also need an AT&T data plan, which starts at about $10/month for this camera. Fortunately, the plan includes 5 GB of free storage in AT&T Locker, a photo/video sharing and cloud-based storage.

For shutterbugs out there who are missing the quality that their big old SLRs used to offer, but who rely on the convenience and connectivity of their slim smartphones, this is a pretty awesome compromise.

I think I can safely say that the Samsung Galaxy Camera has just completely reinvented the camera. -Jeana