Kodak Ektra: The smartphone for photography purists

Less a phone with a camera than a camera with a phone, the Kodak Ektra is aimed squarely at the serious photographer.

The name is familiar to many of us. It first appeared in 1941 on Kodak's groundbreaking rangefinder camera, now considered a design classic. The new Ektra, therefore, has big boots to fill.

First impressions are encouraging: it's a handsome beast, with a big lens standing proud of a dark mottled finish. Fine leather pouches and cases bring a retro aesthetic, as does Kodak's commitment to revive its photo printing service. Upload images from your phone and they'll be posted through your letterbox a few days later in a bright yellow envelope.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Built in partnership with the British smartphone-maker Bullitt, the Ektra is more than just a nostalgia trip. Its wide, fast f/2.0 lens is paired with a 21-megapixel sensor, while a ten-core Helio X-20 chip and 3GB of RAM should ensure fast, smooth image-processing. The 32GB of built-in memory can be expanded with microSD cards.

Flip the handset over and it looks more like a high-end smartphone – it runs on Android Marshmallow – and it performs like one too, although the bright aluminium frame sets it apart from ubiquitous Apples and Samsungs. As does its heft: though only 2.5mm thicker than the iPhone 7 across most of its surface, and 26g heavier, the lens and handgrip bulge out to 14mm, almost twice the thickness of the Apple flagship. It takes up a lot more pocket space.

The screen is slightly bigger, though – 5in rather than 4.7in – and quite a lot sharper, with a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 instead of 1,334 by 750. All the better for admiring those glorious photographs.

And if they're not glorious, you really can't blame the tools. The Ektra's virtual clickwheel – an onscreen version of the traditional SLR control wheel – lets you select from a range of powerful camera modes, including full manual, which hands over control of ISO, shutter speed, exposure, white balance and focus.

As well as pre-sets for portraits, landscapes, action and night shots, there's a "bokeh" mode, which blurs the background of a shot to make the subject stand out. Sample shots printed by Kodak are truly impressive, with faultless richness and detail.

At £449, the Ektra is aggressively priced, as it will have to be to lure customers away from the iPhone, the Samsung S7 and the Google pixel – all of which come with very good cameras. But not good enough for some, Kodak is hoping.

The Kodak Ektra will go on sale in early December