Nikon unveils CoolPix S800c camera running on Android

After being rumored for the last few weeks, Nikon has finally unwrapped its first Android powered point and shoot camera, the CoolPix S800c. It has a 16-megapixel backside illuminated sensor, a 10x optical zoom lens ranging between 25-250mm, f/2.3 aperture, a WVGA 3.5-inch OLED display, Wi-Fi and GPS. All this powered by a UI running atop Android 2.3 Gingerbread with access to Google Play store. Additionally, Nikon bundles 4GB of internal storage and a number of filter effects that could accentuate the quality pictures taken from the camera.
The camera specs might come across as pretty mundane, the big deal is the presence of Android and a rather portable camera which is nearer to a smartphone in terms of portability. Because, the S800ss has access to the Google Play store, so finally we will have a camera that will be able to utilize popular photo editing applications like Instagram, Pixlr-O-Matic and HDR Camera. Nikon also bundles an app called ‘My Picture Town’ for uploading images directly to the cloud, but again because of Android one could even use services like DropBox, Google Drive and Box.
Other capabilities of the camera include a built-in-flash and video recording at 8 frames per second at 1080p resolution. All this makes it a compelling camera, because sharing photos generally from a point and shoot camera normally involves transferring the images to a PC and then the images may go through a bit of post-processing, before finally being uploaded to a social network or a photo sharing service like Flickr. Most of these tasks can be achieved directly of the camera in this case.
Nikon has launched the Coolpix S800ss in the US for $350 and there is no word on an Indian launch.