NX20 wifi usability, the good and the not so good

I did spend some time this week trying out the wifi features on the NX20 and found out that this is a mix bag rather.

The good first:

I had no real issues to setup the apps available on the NX20 as well as on the Android Tab and I got all apps to work as intended. I did connect the NX20 to my WPA2 draft-N home network easily as well as got email submission and Picasa upload to work. The feature that I believe I would love the most is the remote backup one that works nice after you did setup the listener on you PC (windows only). I even managed to get WOL (wake up on LAN) to work. It as well can shut down you PC afterwards again.

I was ok with the UI features of the NX apps as they store the WPA password of the last Wifi connection as well store the last email addresses and picasa accounts used to select from without retyping all the time (which works but is not something you want to do for a living). I do believe those things are stored on the SD card but did not yet check that.

The Andoid apps work after you understand how to handle android wifi direct (and I assume the iOS as well, but as not being a fuit adict I am not able to test it). I tried to connect my DELL Laptop direct with the camera's ad hoc AP and I was able to connect but I did not manage any file access on the NX20 (but that is no feature but more an accademic issue)

The remote viewfinder works and when using Draft-n it is not that bad when it comes to shutter lag. Reviewing the image after shooting on a 7" 1024*600 display is a nice one

The not so good ones:

core issue I believe is that the implementation is the same as on the previouly released compacts. The limitation on the backup app (which I do really like much) for JPEG is no fun when your images are RAW only. I am ok to send JPEG as mail and upload JPEG to Picasa (as that is what I do in real life as well) but I am not amused that I can select them from the UI to attach to mail and after that get the error message not being allowed to do so. A proper implementation would have filtered them out on selection first or (would have asked you to) convert them in the back into a JPEG image with default settings. So you end up back in the image viewer first, convert your RAW to JPEG and back into WIFI... as said, it works as such but the workflow is not really thought thru here and leave lot of room for improvements.

Sending video only works with the you tube upload, no email, no picasa, no backup.

The SkyDrive camera app did crash when trying to upload to Microsoft most likely because of the RAW files on SD card. I will retry with JPEG on the card only to determine if as well this app is limited by using RAW.

As well I would like to see google drive embedded as alternate solution especially when the credentials are already available when you create the Picasa link

The tablet apps are working, but the features are as well limited to the way you would shoot with a compact (all auto, all JPEG). Only Smart mode is supported in the current version which is still the one that came with the January CES batch of camera's

For a camera as the NX20 that is called the flagship camera I would expect better with app features that are on par with the ones the camera provides.

Some final wording on WiFi outlook:

the Wifi was no seeling argument for me as I wanted to have the 20Mpix Sensor in an NX10 Style camera with a usable EVF which is what I got for a reasonable price. Nevertheless I can see the potential in using embedded WiFi and when you currently see all the gadgets around adding remote comms ability to cameras I believe the way Samsung did it here is having the most potential which the details not matching the intentions.....so please Loring/Jay (in case you read it) get back to your developers and ask for something on par with the camera's ability and the way users are shooting with the NX20