Zoom With Galaxy AI: Samsung Set To Take Mobile Photography To The Next Galaxy

Putting rumours to rest that suggest Samsung is planning to downgrade the Galaxy S24 Ultra's camera capabilities, the Korean smartphone giant has released teaser videos that hint at big upgrades for the company's upcoming flagship smartphones.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra beats other smartphones hands down when it comes to taking long-distance shots. The phone features 3x and 10x optical zooms and "Space Zoom," which comes in handy for boosting magnification to 100x.

Taking things to the next level, the purported Galaxy S24 series upgrades from Samsung could give Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max a run for their money. Following in the footsteps of other tech giants including Microsoft and Google, Samsung is sparing no effort to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into its products.

So, it doesn't come as a surprise that the Korean brand is leaning heavily into the AI angle ahead of the upcoming Unpacked event, where the Galaxy S24 series will be officially unveiled.

A new era of mobile AI

In line with a new report that suggests the Galaxy S24, the Galaxy S24 Plus and Galaxy S24 Ultra will be Samsung's smartest ever smartphones, Samsung has teased something called "Zoom with Galaxy AI" in a recent official announcement.

These teasers have been shared on Samsung's official website, where you can reserve to get $50 (about £39.48) in Samsung Credit by pre-ordering the newest phone from Galaxy. The page currently features 3 teasers.

The first teaser comprises a set of images of a hot air balloon that showcase the camera zoom range of at least 10x. It also gives us a glimpse into an effect that appears to enlarge individual objects within a scene to enormous sizes.

In the other 2 zoom examples, Galaxy phone users create a blown-up teddy bear and ice cream using the pinch-to-zoom gesture. This is a major sign that Galaxy AI will be capable of enlarging subjects in your photos with a pinch. This will be similar to the Magic Editor feature in the Google Pixel 8 series.

This also corroborates an earlier rumour fueled by X user Arsène Lupin, suggesting the Galaxy S24 Ultra will have an AI-powered photo editor. In other words, Zoom with Galaxy AI could show us how AI can further enhance magnified photos.

Galaxy S24 series: Everything we know so far

The internet is currently teeming with reports and speculations about the upcoming Galaxy S23 series successors. The word on the street is that the highest-end Galaxy S24 Ultra will house a mammoth 200MP main camera and a 50MP telephoto lens.

The high resolution should improve digital zoom even if Samsung decides to downgrade the optical zoom from 10x to 5x. Google's SuperResZoom feature, which the search giant says, "relies on hardware, software and AI," has already shown us what AI can do to zoomed-in shots.

The Galaxy AI could enable Galaxy S24 Ultra's hardware to generate better zoomed-in shots. We can expect to see notable improvement on the base Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus as well. It will be interesting to see whether these features will trickle down to older Samsung smartphones including the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

It is worth noting that the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus lack a telephoto zoom. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, on the other hand, have 3x optical zoom and a 5x tetraprism zoom, respectively. Their digital zooms are 15x and 25x.

Since the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus will not have as impressive a camera as the Ultra model, they are in greater need of AI assistance, especially if they retain their predecessors' 3x optical zoom and 30x digital zoom.

Key details about Zoom with Galaxy AI are still scarce. Nevertheless, Samsung will divulge more information about the new technology at the Galaxy Unpacked event on January 17.