Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra capabilities

  Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra could capture galaxies and nebulas

Samsung is big on features with its flagship phones and no other model receives the best of the best than its Ultra series. By introducing a 10x telephoto camera back with the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the phone series has always been a best camera phone contender, and it looks the Galaxy S24 Ultra won’t be an exception. One of the often hyped features of the Galaxy S23 Ultra is its ability to capture detailed moon shots. But with a successor phone looming in the shadows, it is expected that Samsung is about to take the next logical leap. With the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung's new phone could finally be able to -capture nebulas and galaxies, which would be a first for a smartphone.

Improvements in image processing and upgraded hardware already allow the best phones to capture stunning astrophotography images. However, those phones were only capable of capturing the faint stars in the night sky and not the galaxies. Galaxy S24 Ultra may ditch the 10x optical zoom camera in past devices for a 5x optical one instead based on the reports available. This would effectively cut the phone’s zoom range by half, which would be a shock given how Sammy takes pride in leading the specs game. The bigger is better approach has long followed Samsung as far back as with the Galaxy series, so scaling down would be a huge shock. As any avid photographer, would  appreciates the extra utility of an optical lens to get closer to a subject, Samsung would be going backwards by ditching the 10x telephoto camera to the series for a 5x. There could be practical reasons for such a change, as well as ways to effectively reach (or surpass) the same level of quality. Galaxy S24 Ultra should be boasting two telephoto cameras, just as before. There will still be a 3x telephoto camera that would land in between the main camera and whatever secondary telephoto camera Samsung ends up putting in the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Every successive phone should have the same or better specs than their predecessor, right? But given how Samsung elevated the bar with a 10x telephoto camera long before anyone else, getting anything less than that would be a downgrade. How image processing advancements and larger sensors could effectively make a 5x telephoto camera almost as good as a 10x one, but you have to understand the differences between optical and digital zooms.

With an optical zoom, you’re essentially increasing the focal length and getting closer to a subject. If we remove all image processing, AI enhancements or any other software based tweaks which most phones apply to photos out of the equation, it’s impossible for a 5x telephoto camera to ever match a 10x telephoto one. 

Digital zooming, on the other hand, has been tossed around over the years — glorified with new monikers like lossless zoom. Every recent phone leverages this technique to a degree, especially if it’s using a large sensor to capture images, which would then apply a tighter crop to deliver “optical quality.”

We also see this technique with how the Galaxy S23 Ultra captures any image exceeding 10x zoom, like its 100x Space Zoom that essentially applies digital zoom to the image captured by its 10x telephoto camera. The iPhone 15 also delivers a 2x telephoto option, which is enabled by a quad-pixel sensor. Pixel 8 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and Galaxy S23 Ultra cameras placed next to each other. By downgrading to a 5x telephoto camera, the Galaxy S24 Ultra could no longer say it has a longer telephoto range than its rivals. In 2023, nearly every one of Samsung’s competitors upgraded the telephoto cameras in their phones. In fact, both the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Pixel 8 Pro top out with 5x telephoto cameras — so it’s hard to believe that Samsung would want to share its crown with them.

The first component to capturing those far off deep space objects is to get as close to them as possible. So far, Galaxy S24 Ultra camera rumours hint at a “quad telephoto” setup, with zoom ranges of 2x, 3x, 5x and 10x. The latter’s the most important because it’ll allow for the best image quality, even when a digital zoom is applied. The same leaked specs sheet also indicates a 100x Space Zoom function with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which would be the zoom range needed to make out the fine details of galaxies and nebulas. However, the biggest unknown right now is whether or not the second telephoto camera will remain as a 10x optical zoom lens or “downgraded” to a 5x optical zoom one instead.

Probably, that’s not the case, especially given how Samsung takes pride in having the best components in its devices. Even if it does turn out to be a “downgraded” 5x telephoto camera, there’s still a way for Samsung to achieve the same level of performance as a true 10x optical camera. Samsung is likely going to lean on artificial intelligence to fill in the gaps. The company has been teasing the possibilities of Galaxy AI for some time now, so AI could be leveraged with astrophotography to uncover those galaxies and nebulas. A common imaging technique with astrophotography is called stacking, where multiple photos are layered on top of each other. If you’ve ever taken photos in low light, you probably know that your phone generally goes into a night mode of sorts, where the camera takes a longer exposure of the shot. This usually means a brighter image, but it requires the camera to stay as still as possible.

In order for the Galaxy S24 Ultra to capture galaxies and nebulas, especially the finer details like the gasses swirling around, the phone would need to be mounted to a tripod or something. As it continues to capture multiple photos of whatever DSO (deep space object) you are capturing, AI would need to stack the images accordingly, while also going through each photo to eliminate noise and other oddities which could occur during the long exposure. It would also cut down the time taken to get an image with the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Doing all of this requires some heavy processing power, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 expected to power the S24 Ultra could be equipped to handle all of it. The chipset was built with AI in mind, so there’s a good chance that it could do an intelligent job at stacking and cleaning up images. There’s a lot of moving pieces in astrophotography. The smart telescopes we are using for astrophotography often require time after finishing up a shooting sequence (which could often take hours) to complete a proper stacking. Each and every image captured would require processing to get the best results. All of this could paint a convincing argument for the Galaxy S24 Ultra to retain the crown in our best camera phones list. AI would be the key ingredient that would finally allow this Galaxy phone to capture galaxies.

Beyond astrophotography, Samsung seems to be investing heavily around AI to power many of the new experiences with the Galaxy S24 series. Its Samsung Gauss AI image generating model, which could be an on-device feature that would generate images based on your input. It could also be incorporated into how the phones handle astrophotography as a whole to better edit and clean up images. Launching early in the year could also prove detrimental if this telephoto downgrade does indeed come to fruition, mainly because it would give the competition ample time to best Samsung. Even though we are still a good ways away from seeing the likes of the iPhone 16 Pro or Pixel 9 Pro.  AI-editing and a better image processing algorithm will help boost the quality of the images captured by a Galaxy S24 Ultra 5x optical zoom camera. The results could be exaggerated so those images could be similar to those captured with a crazy 20x optical zoom. We’ll know soon enough if this turns out true or not, seeing that we now have an official date for Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2024 of January 17. We should also be hearing more about the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus, which aren't tipped for any downgrades