Samsung's amazing 2023 Galaxy S Ultra flagship is the first from the company to sport a 200MP camera. Before this, Samsung was using a 108MP main camera on everything from the Galaxy S20 Ultra to last year's Galaxy S22 Ultra.
But, by default, as many of you may know, these phones don't actually give you photos at the maximum resolution. Instead, they use pixel binning, the process of combining data from multiple small pixels into one big super pixel. Basically, if you don't touch any settings, every Samsung flagship produces 12MP pictures (4000×3000 pixels).
Galaxy S23 Ultra brings not so huge yet notable main camera upgrade
You have the option to switch to the max photo resolution in the camera on all these phones, but generally speaking, 12MP images are what most customers get when they capture photos with their phones. The same is true for the Galaxy S23 series, but there is actually one noticeable change when you view those 12MP pictures in the gallery later: you can zoom into photos further than normal.
This isn't exactly a very useful improvement, but it's an improvement nonetheless. That's because in addition to the fact that the Galaxy S23 Ultra lets you zoom (slightly) more into existing pics than usual, you get sharper text, trees, and other such objects with lower noise in many instances despite the fact that you're comparing two images shot in the auto mode.
To see a comparison, see below a picture captured by the Galaxy S22 Ultra (swipe right) and the Galaxy S23 Ultra (swipe left) at standard zoom levels, followed by 100% crops from both phones after that:
The 200MP camera clearly is the reason why that extra detail exists, though it still came as a surprise to us as it confirms Samsung has tweaked and improved the camera algorithms. We're currently testing the Galaxy S23 camera as much as we can for our upcoming review, but for now just know that the 200MP camera does bring some improvements and isn't just a fancy big number on the spec sheet.
All that said, unless you're zooming in on existing pics or seeing them on a really large screen, the difference in picture quality from the main camera on the Galaxy S22 Ultra or Galaxy S23 Ultra isn't huge. Zoom is best left to the dedicated, er, zoom cameras. In fact, the same goes for differences between the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Galaxy S23 Ultra, so the camera shouldn't be the only thing you should consider before upgrading.
Still, there are other improvements and new camera features for better photography and for video shooting. Look forward to our review in the coming days to see exactly what kind of camera experience the Galaxy S23 Ultra brings to the table.
