Galaxy S4’s “Animated Photo” GIF Camera Feature is Actually Kind of Awesome

The Samsung Galaxy S4 probably has too many features (not necessarily a bad thing). There are so many that our review couldn’t possibly cover them all, nor have we had a chance to use each individual addition to TouchWiz after having the phone for almost a month. It’s just not possible to use them all in every day life. With that said, some of these will come in handy from time to time, especially when it involves the camera. Who doesn’t love an animated GIF? 

Should you enter the camera of the Galaxy S4, you’ll find a new feature called “Animated Photo.” This feature has one purpose, to create amazing animated GIFs without having to touch a computer. When in use, Animated Photo records 5-10 seconds of footage at a resolution of 800×450. Once completed, you have the ability to loop the GIF, change the direction it animates, freeze specific areas that you don’t want to animate, highlight others that you do want active, and even trim it down to the best parts.

I’m sure you are coming up with all sorts of ways to take advantage of this, right? There is one major downside though, that I’ve already come across – the files can be upwards of 8.5MB when finished. That’s massive, and incredibly tough to share with anything other than a computer or other superphone. Still, pretty fun.

For those who already picked up the device, we’d love to see yours.

Example

(Click image or this link to see it in action.)

I posted another one over at our Google+ page too.

Cheers Arjun!