Samsung is launching a 17-lens 360-camera for VR
Samsung may now have the VR camera to beat.
The company just unveiled a new 17-lens 360-degree camera for VR that can live-stream in 4K. Called the 360 Round, it will be available in the U.S. later this month.
Samsung hasn't yet revealed how much the beast of a camera will cost, but we're pretty sure it's not going to be cheap. Google's rival Yi Halo camera comes in at $1,699 and it doesn't have 4K live-streaming capabilities.
The 360 Round looks like it has just about everything a virtual reality filmmaker could want: 17 cameras with f/1.8 lenses, six onboard mics for spatial audio, two external mic hookups, 50GB of internal memory (LPDDR3 and eMMC), support for 2TB of SSD, a gyroscope, accelerometer, and a staggering live streaming resolution of 4,096 x 2,048 at 30fps.
It also has a dust- and water-resistance rating of IP65, so it can stand up to most weather reasonably well, though it's not completely waterproof.
Needless to say, the camera is aimed at professional filmmakers and other commercial uses that require that kind of power. And its price, which hasn't yet been announced, will likely reflect that. But Samsung's 360 Round easily puts them at the same level as its competition from Google and Facebook.
Topics Samsung Virtual Reality Gadgets
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
