Samsung Ups CL80 and TL240's Specs, Outfits Former With AMOLED Touchscreen

Samsung has upgraded two of its point-and-shoot models with larger screens and increased connectivity for sharing. Both shooters feature a 14.2 mega-pixel CCD sensor and 7x optical zoom (up from 12.2 mega-pixel and 5x, respectively), and the CL80 gets a larger 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen.

Where that connectivity is concerned, the CL80 is the pick of the bunch, packed out with wireless sharing features. It's got built-in Wi-Fi, DLNA and Bluetooth connectivity. Using the touchscreen QWERTY keyboard and Wi-Fi, users can share images on Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, and via e-mail.

Like last year's models, both cameras have Samsung's Smart Gesture interface, which lets you interact with the camera via swipes and gestures on the touchscreen (3.7-inch AMOLED on the CL80, 3.5-inch LCD on the TL240). For example, an 'X' motion will delete photos. It's nice to see new interfaces on cameras, but Smart Gesture's performance in previous models isn't as fast as traditional button-based navigation. The touchscreen really shines, though, with touch-based focusing; the camera automatically focuses and follows anything you touch within the frame (e.g., people, pets, landmarks).

Each camera is built so that the back is angled at seven degrees, apparently making it easier to take self-portraits and group shots. Once we're on the show floor we'll see how well this actually works. As far as video goes, both cameras will shoot 720p HD footage (at 30 frames per second) and are HDMI ready (for easy viewing on your TV).

The TL240 lands this February and the CL80 hits sometime this spring.

Tags: camera, cescameras, cl80, point and shoot, PointAndShoot, samsung, tl240, top