Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S23 series is right up there among thebest camera phones money can buy, but smartphone cameras are getting wilder by the day. With theGalaxy S24 serieslaunch slated for early next year, leaks are now setting the expectations for the S24 series’ camera hardware. As you would imagine, it is hard to top theGalaxy S23 Ultra’s 200MP primary camera, and a leaker suggests Samsung is planning incremental improvements.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra came equipped with a 200MPIsocell HP2 sensorSamsung developed in-house. Now, the prolific Samsung news leakerIce Universe on X(formerly Twitter) claims the S24 Ultra will also sport a 200MP primary camera, equipped with an Isocell HP2SX sensor. On paper, this sensor has the exact specifications as the HP2, down to the 0.6 µm pixel size and 1/1.3-inch optical-equivalent size. However, the leaker says this is an optimized version of its predecessor.
That’s not beyond the realm of possibility, considering Samsung could optimize a lot in the image processing pipeline, while leaving the hardware untouched. Despite being one of the best performing smartphone cameras on the market, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, and other S23 series phones, suffered from a few issues like shutter lag resulting in blurry images, and slightly oversaturated colors in most settings.
We would love to bid adieu to the shutter lag with the S24 series, but the color science remains debatable, and dependent greatly on preference. An incremental improvement in the hardware may not have a significant user-facing impact, though. While the changes to the primary sensor may be minor, rumors suggest Samsungmay not upgrade the selfie shooter, but we may get abetter telephoto lens. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see what Samsung can achieve with the rumored HP2SX sensor that shares key specifications with the S23 Ultra’s hardware. We expect the official launch in just a few months from now.
