Samsung Teases 200MP Telephoto Camera
Samsung has just released a teaser suggesting that it plans to adapt its high-resolution 200MP sensors used in the main camera of the Galaxy S23 Ultra and other phones for telephoto cameras as well.
Currently, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is equipped with a 10MP 3X zoom telephoto camera for portraits and nearby object magnification with an f/2.4 aperture, and a 10MP 10X zoom camera with folded optics and an f/4.9 aperture.
Advantages of a 200MP Telephoto Camera
Samsung highlights the advantages of telephoto cameras, such as superior portraits with diminished facial feature distortion and a more shallow depth of field for a bokeh effect in the background. With a 200MP sensor resolution, this can result in incredibly detailed portraits of people and objects, as well as increased light sensitivity when adjacent pixels are binned into one giant virtual pixel.
Samsung demos face distortion decrease with telephoto cameras
Despite the relatively short zoom range of the telephoto camera compared to its 10x periscope zoom set, Samsung claims that on a 3x telephoto module with a 200MP sensor, lossless zoom scenarios can be run from 3x to 6x to 12x, which means that more diverse scenes can be captured without any loss of resolution.
Samsung argues that telephoto cameras can benefit tremendously from ultra high-res 200MP sensors
Samsung believes that its own 200MP camera sensors are particularly well-suited for high-resolution lossless zoom. The 200MP ISOCELL HP2 and ISOCELL HP3 specifically enhance zoomed shooting quality by using a deep-learning-based remosaic algorithm to optimize details in each scene. Additionally, when paired with flagship application processors (APs) like the Snapdragon Mobile Platform, which have internal components that support parallel computation, such as digital signal processors (DSPs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), the image quality is significantly improved.
Will the Galaxy S23 Ultra Get Samsung’s 200MP Telephoto Camera?
It remains to be seen if Samsung will deploy its 200MP telephoto camera in the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Samsung has a history of teasing innovative camera technology and then implementing it in upcoming phones a few months later, typically in devices by Xiaomi or BBK (Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus) used as testbeds.
A Galaxy S24 Ultra featuring a 200MP main camera and a 200MP telephoto camera would be a significant advancement in smartphone photography, potentially rivaling the iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, Samsung has not revealed the exact timeframe for the deployment of its ultra high-resolution telephoto zoom camera sensor.
