Samsung's killer new Galaxy S10 camera feature has been used by another major smartphone maker since 2016

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

• Samsung's latest Galaxy S10 has three rear cameras, one of which is the killer ultrawide angle camera lens.
• But Samsung wasn't the first to add an ultrawide angle camera to its phones.
• LG first introduced the camera feature in 2016 with the LG G5 and V20.

One of the best features on the Galaxy S10 that sets it apart from almost every other phone out there is the ultrawide camera that helps you capture a lot more than a regular smartphone camera.

With the ultrawide camera, the regular camera, and the zoomed camera, the Galaxy S10 has three rear cameras that offers way more versatility for taking photos than most other smartphones.

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By including an ultrawide camera, Samsung may seem like the outlier among the sea of other smartphone makers, including Apple and other Android phone makers, which have typically adopted a regular camera and a zoomed "telephoto" lens with a 2x zoom for the secondary lens. 

But the ultrawide smartphone camera has been a staple - nay, signature - feature on LG's smartphones since 2016, starting with the LG G5 that was released in April 2016 and the LG V20 in September 2016.

Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider

Admittedly, I wasn't a huge fan of LG's ultrawide angle camera when the LG G5 and V20 were released. And I wasn't too favorable towards the ultrawide cameras on subsequent LG phones, including the LG G6 and V30 from 2017. 

It's only when the LG V40 came in October 2018 when I started to come around and appreciate ultrawide angle photos.

In fact, the LG V40 should be the smartphone that gets credited for having the most camera options before Samsung did with the Galaxy S10. The LG V40 was the first phone to come with a triple-lens camera system that included a regular camera, a zoomed camera, and an ultrawide angle camera before the S10.

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

The LG V40 even has a secondary ultrawide angle selfie camera with a 21mm focal length that's wider than the Galaxy S10's selfie camera with a 26mm focal length (the lower the number the wider the photo). It's a massive shame that Samsung didn't give the S10 a proper ultrawide selfie camera like the LG V40 and Pixel 3 have.

LG's new G8 smartphone will likely be released in the coming months, and it'll also come with comes with a triple-lens camera system like the Galaxy S10, one of which is an ultrawide camera.