The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is shaping up to be one of the best phones for photography, and a growing chorus of leaks seems to confirm the biggest upgrade of all: a 200MP sensor, up from 108MP on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The Ultra is one of the very best Samsung phones already, and the 2023 model is going to be even better.
We've already heard that the Galaxy S23 Ultra will have vastly improved night mode photography, and an impressive concept video gives us a pretty good indication of how the phone will look. And now a new leak adds more details about the camera spec.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: what to expect from its incredibly powerful camera
According to Yogesh Brar, whose previous leaks have tended to check out, the Samsung Galaxy S23 camera specs are "200MP + 10MP (10X, Periscope Tele) + 10MP (3x Tele) + 12MP (UW)".
By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has 108MP + 10MP (10x periscope) + 10MP (3x) and 12MP ultra-wide. As we said in our review, "the camera system is one of the best you’ll find on any smartphone up to this point... Whether you’re snapping selfies, shots of landscapes, cityscapes, one person, two people, plants or pets photos come out looking bold, sharp and vibrant."
It's likely that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra will use pixel binning on that main camera, a feature we've already seen in Samsung phones and which is also in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. It combines multiple pixels into a single super-pixel that captures more light and delivers vastly improved images; the results will be 50MP rather than 200MP but 50MP is seriously high resolution: dedicated digital SLRs such as the Canon EOS 5DS R deliver 50.6MP. That's an astonishing figure for any camera, let alone a smartphone one.
We're expecting to see the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra launch in early 2023, and at this rate Samsung might not have any secrets left by the time its keynote begins.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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