The Galaxy S21 series will be unveiled early next month, but the most important aspects of the upcoming smartphones have been leaked already. The design and specifications of the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and the Galaxy S21 Ultra had surfaced last month. It is now being reported that Samsung has added two important features to the ultrawide cameras on the Galaxy S21 series devices.
While it might not look like there are any improvements in the Galaxy S21 series' camera hardware due to the same resolution and sensor size, Samsung is rumored to have added dual-pixel phase detection autofocus and macro mode to the ultrawide cameras. According to a tweet from @UniverseIce, the South Korean smartphone giant has also upgraded the ultrawide camera's sensor from ISOCELL S5K2LA to Sony IMX563. The ultrawide camera now features a 123-degree field-of-view compared to the Galaxy S20‘s 120-degree field-of-view.
The Sony IMX563 sensor has a size of 1/2.55-inch, 1.4μm pixels, and dual-pixel autofocus. It should now be able to offer sharper ultrawide images and videos. Hopefully, with the ISP improvements in the Exynos 2100 and the Snapdragon 888, Samsung should be able to offer 4K 60fps HDR10+ video recording through the ultrawide camera and smooth switching between all the rear-facing camera sensors on the Galaxy S21 series.
The Galaxy S21 and the Galaxy S21+ are rumored to feature triple cameras on the rear: a 12MP wide-angle camera (1/1.76-inch) with dual-pixel autofocus, a 12MP ultrawide camera with dual-pixel autofocus, and a 64MP telephoto camera. The Galaxy S21 Ultra is expected to use an upgraded 108MP ISOCELL HM3 sensor for the wide-angle camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and two 10MP telephoto cameras (one with 3x optical zoom and the other with 10x optical zoom).