With great power comes great responsibility, and with more cameras on a flagship phone come new and improved features. Samsung talked all about the Galaxy S10 cameras at the official unveiling, focusing on the new ultra-wide camera joining the Dual Aperture and telephoto lens from the Galaxy S9. The ultra-wide camera enables pictures with a 23-degree field of view, and it changes a key element of the Live Focus mode that I am happy to see on the Galaxy S10.
I've loved having 2x zoom capability on Samsung's flagship phones. But I've never liked the fact that in Live Focus mode, the camera zooms in on the subject. With dual camera setups that include a telephoto lens, the telephoto lens is the one used when you switch to Live Focus mode. The primary camera is tasked to capturing the background and the telephoto lens captures the subject in focus. Well, at least that's my understanding of how dual cameras enable bokeh pictures, and it forces you to move back to maintain proper distance with the subject that you're trying to capture more often than not.
Samsung's mid-range and budget phones come with a dedicated depth sensor at the back instead of a telephoto lens, so there's no zooming in involved on those, giving you more leeway to frame the subject as you see fit. And that's the case on the Galaxy S10 as well, since Samsung is using the primary 12 MP sensor for capturing the subject on the S10 and the ultra-wide sensor for the background. This also allows the S10 to take slightly wider bokeh pictures and enables the Galaxy S10e to have Live Focus support as well.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether this change will make me use Live Focus more often. And based on my short time with the S10+, I'm not sure the overall quality of the bokeh pictures has improved. Our review units are running pre-release software, though, so I wouldn't go so far as giving you a solid conclusion at the moment.
SamsungGalaxy S10e
SamsungGalaxy S10
