The mirrorless market is just about to get hit with a bombshell as relatively unknown Yongnuo hits the market with their first camera on the market. First teased in a post by company’s Facebook page, the Hong-Kong based company is preparing to launch a game-changer for photographers.
The YN450 has a ton of tricks up its sleeve to surprise even the most loyal photographers. As detailed in a post, the YongNuo YN450 is said to pack a 5-inch 1080p display, an unknown eight-core Qualcomm SoC, a 16MP Micro Four Thirds rear sensor from Panasonic, an 8MP selfie camera, 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage and a 4000mAh battery running on Android. However, the specs aren’t done yet, the camera also supports 4G connectivity, 4k/30FPS recording, dual-mic stereo recording, a 3.5mm headphone jack, GPS, and Canon’s hoard of EF lenses and RAW.
Given that YongNuo is being a bit vague regarding the SoC, it seems like the camera should most probably be running an older SoC from Qualcomm, most probably from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 series. If we’d say, we’d say that the YongNuo YN450 most probably packs the Snapdragon 615/625 SoCs given that they’ve been phased out by the newly announced Snapdragon 670 SoCs, and others.
If that wasn’t enough to light up your senses then nothing will. YongNuo is yet to announced the camera into the market and give us any hint of what price the YN450 would be retailing at. However, when it does launch, we’re expecting to see the camera to retail for under $499.
Competition around YongNuo would certainly be fierce. However, the company has certainly set itself apart from this launch. We’ve seen Xiaomi try to half-bake their Yi Mirrorless camera last year. However, given that the YN450 brings a ton lot to the table and that it runs on Android, we would be impressed even further if developers come forward and unlock Google Camera functionality for the device, albeit an older build of the apk if newer ones couldn’t work. For now, we’d be worried to hear if the device would be announced for local Chinese markets exclusively. Let’s hope that’s not the case.