Major camera improvements are coming to Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra, according to a new report, but owners of the flagship smartphone will have to be patient.
The information comes from prolific leaker Ice Universe, who claims that Samsung’s imminent March firmware download will include an unexplained “underage mode” as well as other unspecified optimizations. However, the big changes won’t arrive until the subsequent April release, which will include a “major camera update” improving both white balance and telephoto image quality, according to the leaker.
Since replacing the dedicated 10x telephoto lens of the S23 Ultra with a 5x model in the S24 Ultra, albeit with a much higher resolution sensor, Samsung has had a challenging task convincing customers that the long-range zoom quality of previous flagship models can be maintained. Indeed, as Dxomark’s tests reveal, the Galaxy S24 Ultra currently underperforms against the Galaxy S23 Ultra when shooting at the very highest magnifications, despite significant improvements across the rest of the telephoto range.
Ice Universe, too, has previously criticized the S24 Ultra’s rendition of extremely “zoomed-in” photos when compared to images captured with rival flagships such as the OPPO Find X7 Ultra and Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
However, while Samsung can’t now fix any shortcomings inherent in the hardware, tweaks to the camera’s image processing algorithms still offer plenty of scope for significant software-based improvements.
Some S24 Ultra owners have noticed that the camera currently tends to apply its image processing algorithms in an inconsistent manner where, for example, shots captured at 9.9x zoom can have a markedly different appearance, which some prefer to those shot at 10x. Significant differences in processing have also been shown to occur when text is visible in telephoto images, resulting in the non-textual parts of the picture appearing radically different to when no text is in frame.
These differences in quality are all down to decisions made in software that Samsung could easily improve over time. All will be revealed in the April software update.
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