A short video that was posted to Reddit this morning appears to give us our first glimpse of GoPro’s long-awaited Hero 5 camera. The video is the same kind of quick how-to that usually lives in the company’s mobile apps, as it shows a step-by-step process of how to connect the camera to a smartphone. It’s just nine seconds long, and it only shows the back of the camera. But considering how little we know about the Hero 5, which is supposed to be released in time for the holidays, there are still a few things that can be gleaned from the clip.
For one, the entire back of the camera appears to have a touchscreen. That would mean that the bus connector — the inch-long slot that allowed users to attach extra batteries, LCD screens, and other accessories to previous GoPro models — could be on its way out. Defaulting to a touchscreen would be a bit of a change of pace for the company, too. While GoPro employed a touchscreen on the Silver model of the Hero 4, the top-of-the-line Hero 4 Black and the low-end Session require users to frame up shots by using the company’s mobile app.
Will the Hero 5 be waterproof out of the box?
The video just shows the back of the device, but you can get a sense of what the camera might look like. The "record" button on top is slightly raised now, and the camera has rounded edges, making it look more like a big version of the Session and less like the sharply rectangular Hero 4 cameras. Could that — plus the lack of an open bus connector on the back — mean that the Hero 5 will be waterproof out of the box, just like the smaller Session?
The menu shown in the video looks a bit different from the one currently found on GoPro’s Hero 4 cameras. It appears to be simpler and more touchscreen-friendly, with a row of quick settings at the bottom for changing things like framerate, shooting mode, and resolution. As the video progresses, there’s a curious option in the "Connections" menu: something called "GoPro Sniper." GoPro doesn’t appear to have registered any trademarks for this name, so perhaps it’s just a project name for another product.
Otherwise, the rest looks pretty standard, like Wi-Fi and a microphone (that you can turn off, which would be a new feature). If this is really the Hero 5, then it’s not going to be as radical a departure from GoPro’s other hardware as something like the Session was. The real question will be whether or not there’s enough difference here to encourage people to buy a new camera.
The video was buried in GoPro's Android app
As for the authenticity of the video, it was posted by Konrad Iturbe, a self-described tinkerer / hacker and GoPro fan. The file appears to have come from the Android version of the GoPro app, and after some digging I was able to find it in the the latest version of the app’s Android Application Package (APK) titled "add_camera_hero5.mp4." That was it, though — the only other mentions of the Hero 5 in the APK are a few random XML files.
Iturbe also recently dug up an image of what some think is GoPro’s drone, Karma, though I’ve been told by GoPro that that’s not true. The company declined to comment on this new video, however.
