It turns out that support for the Gear VR or the Infinity display aren't the only features that have trickled down from Samsung's flagship phones to its Galaxy A lineup. As discovered by GalaxyClub, the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018) come with real-time HDR functionality for both the front and rear cameras. Real-time HDR has long been exclusive to Samsung's top-of-the-line smartphones, but it looks like the increased power under the hood on the newest A series phones has allowed the company to break that exclusivity.
Real-time HDR comes to Samsung's mid-range
Real-time HDR is a camera feature that was introduced by Samsung a few years back with the Galaxy S5. As the name suggests, it intelligently detects whether a scene or subject needs to be captured in HDR and allows for instant saving of HDR-enabled pictures, removing the need for the user to wait a few seconds till the HDR image is saved. Smartphone processors have come a long way since the S5 was released, and it looks like the Exynos 7885 chipset inside the A8 handsets has what it takes to process HDR images as quickly as normal images.
In fact, Samsung's so confident about the feature that it hides the real-time HDR option in the camera settings and sets it to automatic by default. You can access it by opening the camera app, tapping the gear icon on the top right to go into the camera settings, and looking for the HDR (rich tone) option under both the rear and front camera tabs. It can be toggled between off, on, and automatic, but there's no reason to select anything but the last option other than deliberately wanting to take a non-HDR photo against sources of light.
Look out for our review of the A8 and A8+ to see how the cameras fare in real-world usage, and don't forget to check out our initial impressions of Samsung's latest mid-range handsets and a few samples from the dual front camera.
