Fujifilm FinePix F800EXR wants to give your phone a wireless hug

Fujifilm has outed its latest compact camera, the FinePix F800EXR, pairing a sizable 20x optical zoom with the convenience of wireless transfer between it and your smartphone or tablet. Install the Fujifilm Photo Receiver on your Android or iOS device, and it can suck over shots – thirty at a time – while using he the company's Camera Application turns the handset into a GPS logger, sending location details to the F800EXR to be geotagged to each shot.

That then allows subsequent viewing of the photos to be done by location, either in a third-party app or by sending the image to the phone or tablet and browsing in Fujifilm's mapping system. That also includes a 1m POI database so that relevant local information is flagged up with each frame.

As for the camera itself, it uses a 1/2-inch 16-megapixel EXR-CMOS sensor with a 25-500mm zoom and ISO up to 12,800. It has a 3-inch 460k dot LCD display, HDMI output and USB, and can record up to 1080p Full HD video. Autofocus is as fast a 0.16s, Fujifilm claims, with 8fps continuous shooting at full resolution.

Convenience settings include the usual scene and automatic modes, but Fujifilm also offers the so-called EXR modes too. They include EXR HR (High Resolution), which takes a full 16-megapixel shot, EXR DR (Dynamic Range), which combines two shots to increase dynamic range by up to 1,600-percent, and EXR SN (Signal to Noise), which doubles up on data from pixels – similar to the tech in Nokia's 808 PureView - for reduced resolution but better results in low-light conditions.

The Fujifilm FinePix F800EXR will go on sale in August, priced at $349.95. You can find the Fujifilm Photo Receiver app for iOS here [iTunes link] and for Android here