Samsung proves the S24 Ultra camera is out of this world

Call it a marketing stunt or whatever else, but there's no denying that tying your phone to some serious balloons and sending it to the stratosphere is pretty cool. That's exactly what Samsung has done with its latest flagship. "Why?" you ask, well they're not just trying to put the 'Galaxy' in Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

In fact, Samsung did this to show off the camera on its latest flagship and it's definitely worth shouting about. The 200 MP main camera is something to behold and it features more AI and camera processing tricks than a robot magician. It's undoubtedly one of the best phones out there. 

First reported by PetaPixel we know that Samsung managed to send not one but four phones into the stratosphere using four 'stratospheric balloons' and a carbon fibre cage, where they then snapped plenty of shots of the US from above. At a height of just over 22 miles, the phones snapped over 150 pictures using the 1x, 3x and 5x cameras and the results are spectacular. 

According to insider Fahim Al Mahmud Ashik, Samsung was then amazingly able to recover the phones after deflating the balloons and using parachutes to steady their descent. We officially live in the future. Technically the stratosphere isn't space, but if you are high enough to see the curvature of Earth, that's space to me. 

So what makes these snaps so incredible? Well, the hardware is some of the best out there. The S24 Ultra has a supreme optical image stabilisation system for one but the zoom performance is also night and day. 2024 saw Samsung's flagship drop the 10x optical zoom with a 10 MP sensor and replace it with a 5x one but with a 50 MP sensor, that's a massive leap in terms of image quality. 

On a more basic level, it's reassuring to know that if we ever get up that high, our phones will be ready to get us some killer Instagram shots.