The camera was the star of the show during Samsung's Unpacked event last week for the Galaxy S23 Ultra. We appreciate the simplicity of the company's messaging for this device. The entire message is crafted to make it easier for customers to grasp just what the camera is capable of.
Samsung's focus on improving the Galaxy S23 Ultra's camera had a bigger purpose. It wanted to beat the iPhone. As the Ultra's camera setup has always been compared to its counterpart from Apple, Samsung decided to put its best foot forward.
Samsung wanted to beat the iPhone's cameras
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is the first phone from Samsung to feature a 200-megapixel sensor. Other sensors in the setup have been upgraded as well. The company has also added new software functionality and significantly improved AI processing to enhance low-light photography and videography.
Cho Sung-dae, executive vice president of Samsung’ mobile division, joined the company as a senior researcher in 2004. He has been instrumental in developing camera technologies for Galaxy phones. It was one of his biggest concerns that the camera performance of Galaxy phones was being compared to the iPhone, with the perception fast becoming that the latter was better in some areas.
“I heard many people saying things like ‘Samsung phone is good for taking photos and Apple is good for videos’ or ‘Samsung is for landscapes, while Apple is for portraits,” he said, adding that Samsung conducted global surveys to pinpoint where it needed to make improvements. Many of the enhancements that we see with the Galaxy S23 Ultra are made based on the results from Gen Z and millennials in these surveys.
Unsurprisingly, participants wanted better selfies, so Samsung added fast autofocus and Super HDR to the selfie camera. The object-based AI does a great job of analyzing and capturing an individual's characteristics such as hair and eyes. “I’m sure users won’t tell the difference whether it was taken on the Galaxy S23 series or Apple phones this time,” Cho says.
The preliminary observations that we've had are certainly promising, and we look forward to conducting detailed tests that reveal just how much better the Galaxy S23 Ultra's camera really is.
