Support for up to 2 generations back on the Ultra models
Samsung has gained favor among smartphone photographers with the addition of the Expert RAW app to its Galaxy S21 Ultra, introducing some advanced features that exceed the capabilities of Pro Mode in the standard Camera app. While the Galaxy S22 announcement confirmed every model in the lineup would receive the app at launch, a Samsung forum moderator revealed Expert RAW would be supported on more devices. Just as the S22 is shipping to customers, Samsung has formalized the list of phones and dates they’ll receive official support for the latest Expert RAW app.
- February 22
- Galaxy S22
- Galaxy S22 Plus
- Galaxy S22 Ultra
- Early March
- April
- First half of 2022
- Galaxy S20 Ultra
- Galaxy Note 20 Ultra
- Galaxy Z Fold 2
Samsung’s Expert RAW app includes a number of computational photography features to improve shots, including multi-frame HDR, improved low-light performance through merging data from multiple sensors, and RAW capture on the telephoto camera. There is also direct integration with the Adobe Lightroom app for editing, and images can be saved in lossless JPEG and 16-bit DNG RAW.
The criteria for Samsung’s selection has three minimum requirements: the phone must be based on at least an Exynos 990 or SM8250 (Snapdragon 865) SoC, include 8GB or more RAM, and have a telephoto lens supporting Bayer RAW with 2x (or higher) optical zoom. The minimum requirements on the SoC and RAM were set to ensure reasonable performance while processing Multi-RAW shooting and processing.
Unfortunately, while several devices meet the first two criteria — like the S20 family, Note20, and remaining S21 models — they only include a 1.1x optical zoom lens, which excludes them from using Expert RAW.
The rollout schedule aims to wrap up by the end of June, if not earlier. Some phones on this list are closing in on 2 years of age, if not older by the time the app reaches them, which makes this one of the better examples of adding new features to already-released smartphones.
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