Polaroid SC1630

Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera

More and more people are turning to their awesome smartphones with iffy cameras for their everyday photography. Polaroid takes a similar, if fundamentally backwards approach with the SC1630 Smart Camera. It's an OK camera attached to a decent Android phone. It actually works better than you might expect. We spent a brief time with it on the showroom floor at CES 2012 and gathered some initial impressions. From the front, the SC1630 looks like any old ultracompact camera. But there’s a party out back: flip it over, and it turns into an Android phone, only without the phone part. It’s like an off-brand Samsung Galaxy Player with with a better, zoomier camera lens. The unit we handled on the CES 2012 show floor kept losing its faceplate. It had probably been through thousands of hands by the time we checked it out, but it still had a light, cheap feel to it. Hopefully that gets worked out by the release date. Fun fact: Apparently this thing has a SIM card slot and a 3G radio built it. It’s actually an Android phone if you want it to be. Pretty cool, no?