Better photos don’t just come from hardware
Despite early rumors suggesting that Samsung could make the leap to a 200MP sensor, we’re now expecting that the Galaxy S22 Ultra will feature a camera array that’s very similar to its predecessor’s: a 108MP primary camera, two 10MP telephoto sensors, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 40MP selfie cam. But even without taking a new direction for hardware, we couldn’t help but wonder what sort of changes Samsung might be cooking up in the software department. The latest rumors give us an idea of how photography on the Galaxy S22 Ultra could improve with the help of some AI-powered post-processing.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra will supposedly offer an AI-enhancement mode for the 108MP primary camera (per Ice Universe). Acording to this info, when taking photos at full 108MP resolution, a button will appear at the bottom-right of the screen to enable this mode, aiming to provide more detail, color, and brightness. Another tweet from the same leaker further emphasizes the role AI will play in the S22 Ultra’s camera, and most of the photography improvement in this generation will reportedly be due to software chops, rather than hardware tweaks.
The idea of AI-driven smartphone cameras is hardly new to us. Apple and Google phones have managed to produce comparable or even better photos than Samsung’s whileequipped with seemingly less-capable camera hardware — neither the iPhone 13 Pro Max nor the Pixel 6 Pro offers the same resolution nor as many cameras as the Galaxy S21 Ultra, but you could argue that they produce better pictures. Even the Pixel 5 had a 4-year-old camera sensor and managed to take photos that still managed to impress.
This may be just one case of Samsung using AI to enhance photo quality, but it’s not hard to imagine that we could end up seeing more along this line by the time the S22 Ultra launches in February. Considering the company’s biggest rivals have been leaning hard into computational photography for years, perhaps a new focus on post-processing will help Samsung compete.
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