When Samsung started expanding its "trademark" navigation control design (elongated physical home button + two capacitive buttons) beyond its smartphone range, I bet you never thought it would get this far. TechTastic has grabbed some photos of the alleged Galaxy S4 Zoom, a camera-phone hybrid based on the ubiquitous Galaxy S4. These photos roughly match the leaked press image that SamMobile showed off yesterday. This thing is real, or at least real enough that some hardware has been produced.

The S4 Zoom follows the same basic layout of the original Galaxy Camera: smartphone screen and interface in front, powerful point-and-shoot 'round the back. From a head-on view, you could certainly confuse this model with the S4, or at least a smaller, cheaper version. Unconfirmed specifications for the S4 Zoom include a 4.3-inch 960x540 AMOLED display, a 1.6Ghz dual-core processor, W-Fi only (in this model), and 8GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot. Regular readers will realize that the internal specs match up pretty well with the Galaxy S4 Mini.

As for the camera part of this... camera, the primary sensor is 16 megapixels. There's some kind of optical zoom on the lens, and Samsung's typical phone buttons have been swapped for dedicated shutter and zoom controls. The device in these photos looks it might be a pre-production model - note the unusually wide gaps in the 3 plastic seams. These specs are a bit strange next to the current Galaxy Camera, which has a quad-core processor and a larger 720p screen - perhaps this is a budget-friendly model intended to be priced below a true sequel in the marketplace.

TechTastic thinks the Galaxy S4 Zoom will be officially announced at Samsung's Premiere London event on June 20th. Since they seem to have announced everything else close to completion (including the S4 Active, S4 Mini, and two new Galaxy Tab 3 models) at or around Computex, that seems like a pretty safe bet.

Via TechTastic