200MP lens’ night photography will be the biggest improvement “in five years”.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is one of the best camera phones you can buy, but photography fans will be blown away by the picture quality of its successor if one prominent leaker is to be believed. Ice Universe — a leaker with a strong track record, especially when it comes to Samsung handsets — has been posting about the quality of the upcoming Galaxy S23 Ultra’s camera for the last few days.
To recap, Ice Universe has previously stated that the S23 Ultra will feature a 200MP camera with 0.6µm pixels on a 1/1.3″ sensor and an f/1.7 aperture in front.
Now it seems the leaker has seen the power of this new sensor first-hand. “The 200MP of Samsung S23 Ultra is too strong,” he wrote(opens in new tab), adding that it’s “stronger than all the 200MP I have seen before.” And while the telephoto camera specs remain the same as the S22 Ultra, Ice Universe says that there are improvements here too.
“Although the 3x and 10x camera specs are exactly the same as those of the S22 Ultra, the S23 Ultra still has an improvement in telephoto, and the improvement in color and some AI algorithms is obvious,” he wrote(opens in new tab). Hopefully that means that S22 Ultra owners will see a telephoto improvement via a software update at some point down the line.
But the biggest improvement comes in night mode, the leaker claims(opens in new tab). This is apparently down to improvements in the CIS (contact image sensors) which have resulted in “the biggest improvement of Samsung’s flagship mobile phone in five years.” High praise indeed.
“Specifically, in an environment with almost no light, the S23 Ultra’s 5 seconds shooting is much better than the S22 Ultra’s 6 seconds, not only brighter, but also significantly improved in image quality,” he added later(opens in new tab). Twitter isn’t the only place where Ice Universe has been talking up the S23 Ultra’s camera potential. On Weibo(opens in new tab), he emphasized the possible improvements of a 200MP camera with this comparison shot.
While some have reported this as a direct S23 Ultra vs S22 Ultra comparison, there is no evidence that this is the case.
“The resolution of a 200 million pixel magnified 16 times cropped part is indeed beyond any 100 million pixels,” the machine-translated caption simply states. (AI detail enhancement is turned off) 1. The best 200MP 2. The best 108MP”. In other words, it has a 200MP camera, but it isn’t the S23 Ultra’s, as some have claimed.
However, even if it is just a comparison between the S22 Ultra and the Xiaomi 12T Pro, it is still a good one. After all, Ice claimed that the S23 Ultra’s lens is “stronger than all the 200MP I’ve seen before.”
We could be putting the camera on the Samsung S23 Ultra through its paces in a full review sooner than you think. According to one report, Samsung’s next flagship phones will be released in January to get a jump on the competition in 2023 and to provide a solid competitor to Google’s Pixel 7 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro. If Ice Universe is correct, the battle should be exciting.
