SamMobile's Galaxy S23 Ultra review was a collaboration between me and Ben (our YouTube honcho), and one of my main contributions to the review was the camera section. I found the Galaxy S3 Ultra's cameras to be excellent, with that 200MP rear camera actually giving you more detailed photos in all sorts of lighting conditions.
Higher detail was also a theme across the 3x and 10x optical zoom cameras, even though the hardware didn't really change between the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Samsung's post-processing algorithms make things noticeablably sharper at high magnification ranges (30x or more) – even 100x zoom photos look good sometimes, although the instances of that being true are pretty rare.
But again, the two telephoto cameras on the S23 Ultra do quite well overall, and there's no replacing Samsung's Ultra-branded flagships as far as the overall camera experience is concerned (though we would love to see faster shutter speeds that don't blur moving people or objects, which is one area where Samsung falls behind its competitors, especially Apple).
Galaxy S20 Ultra zoom pics are nothing to scoff at even four years later
We will be pitting the Galaxy S23 Ultra's cameras against older Galaxy S Ultra smartphones in the near future to see how far things have progressed, but early this morning I opened my drawer and found the Galaxy S20 Ultra (the only flagship — or any phone — I've bought in the last four years) and decided to test at least one scenario. I wanted to see how the zoom capabilities differ between the two, something I wasn't able to test for our review.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra was Samsung's first phone with a periscope camera. It used a single 48MP telephoto camera with 4x optical zoom, while higher zoom photos were a mix of optical and digital zoom. You got usable pics till about 30x magnification, while Samsung's 100x ‘Space Zoom' was more or less a gimmick, except maybe for photos of the moon.
For the Galaxy S21 Ultra, Samsung switched to using both a 3x optical and a 10x optical camera to improve zoom quality for close and far-off scenes. That setup continues to thrive on all Galaxy S Ultra phones since then, with even the S23 Ultra featuring 3x and 10x optical cameras. But, as pointed above, the Galaxy S23 Ultra has the benefit of better post-processing, which results in sharper images at all zoom levels.
However, is it really all that better at taking zoomed-in photos since Samsung first started using periscope telephoto cameras with the Galaxy S20 Ultra? Well, as mentioned above, we will be doing more detailed camera comparisons in the coming days, but from a quick test I did just a few hours before writing this article, I have to say the Galaxy S20 Ultra's 48MP periscope camera is far from outdated.
I mean, just look at the 3x, 5x (which is the default magnification level on the S20 Ultra), 10x, and 30x photos side by side below. The pictures on the left were taken with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, and the right side shows results from the S23 Ultra.
For anyone wondering, I'm not saying the quality of the zoom camera has not improved compared to the S20 Ultra. Check the last comparison in the gallery above – the Galaxy S23 Ultra clearly has a lot more detail on things like the stones in the background and the yellow vehicle at the center, with the text on the latter completely visible. The Galaxy S20 Ultra pictures look washed out while the Galaxy S23 Ultra's photos are also more vivid, although both will appeal to people depending on their preferences.
But still, when you're just taking and looking at zoom pictures on the phone or shooting at 10x or lower zoom level, the Galaxy S20 Ultra does just fine four years later. In fact, I would be perfectly happy with my S20 Ultra unless I were to see pictures I've taken with it next to pictures captured on any of the newer Galaxy S Ultra models. If I were a Galaxy S20 Ultra owner (which I actually am) and the quality of zoom photos was my main motivation for upgrading to the S23 Ultra, I wouldn't (unless I get an excellent exchange deal).
Who knows? Maybe, after upgrading the main camera from a 108MP sensor to a 200MP sensor this year, Samsung will switch focus and work on bettering zoom photography on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. We haven't seen any substantial zoom improvements since the Galaxy S20 Ultra hit the scene, and it might be high time for Samsung to change that, both because it would benefit users and give the company an edge over the competition.
