The Samsung Galaxy S20's cameras are its biggest update in years - here are all the new changes
Each model of the Galaxy S20 comes with a regular, ultra-wide, and a zoom lens, which was already expected.
Samsung already employed triple-lens camera systems in the Galaxy S10 from 2019, which in itself was already a massive leap compared to the Galaxy S7 from 2016.
As expected, Samsung kept the triple-lens camera system for the Galaxy S20. If you've been keeping up with smartphone news over the last year or so, triple-lens camera systems shouldn't be much of a surprise.
If you're wondering just how wide the ultra-wide cameras on the Galaxy S20 phones go, they clock in at a 120-degree field-of-view. That's actually three degrees less than the 123-degree field-of-view from the Galaxy S10 series ultra-wide cameras.
With that said, the regular camera on the Galaxy S20 phones clock in with a 79-degree field-of-view, while the Galaxy S10's regular camera had a 77-degree field-of-view. You win some, you lose some, with the Galaxy S20 series. Still, these differences are so minute that no one will likely notice the difference.
One of the major camera updates in the Galaxy S20 is the size of the sensors, which means more megapixels.
Samsung used bigger sensors with the Galaxy S20 phones than it did with previous Galaxy models. Bigger sensors means more megapixels, and the Galaxy S20 phones certainly have more megapixels than any Galaxy phones before them.
The Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus have standard 12-megapixel sensors for the regular and ultra-wide camera lenses, but each pixel is about 28% larger than on the Galaxy S10 and previous Galaxies. Larger pixels means the camera can absorb more light, and theoretically it should perform better in low-light situations.
Samsung also doubled the number of images it processes at different brightness levels to merge into one photo, which the company says will significantly improve the Galaxy S20's low-light performance.
The zoom lens on the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus is a whopping 64-megapixels compared to the 12-megapixel zoom lens on the Galaxy S10.
With the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus, you get 3x optical zoom and up to 30x zoom with a combination of optical and digital zoom. The extra megapixels in the Galaxy S20 should allow for better clarity and details in digital zooming past the 3x optical zoom.
I should note that the Galaxy S20 doesn't come with a fourth depth-sensing lens that's designed for better portrait mode shots. That's apparently a luxury reserved for the S20 Plus and S20 Ultra.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra is a different beast, which we get to below.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra is a different beast compared to the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra has the same 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera as its smaller and less expensive sibling. But the Ultra really goes ham with its other cameras.
The regular lens on the Galaxy S20 Ultra has a whopping 108-megapixel camera, which should theoretically give incredible clarity and detail in well-lit shots. The idea here is that you'll be able to crop into distant subjects/objects after taking a photo and still maintain a high amount of detail. It's like zooming without the zoom.
By default, however, photos will actually be compacted from 108 megapixels to 12 megapixels. When that happens, you get pixels that are 71% larger than the Galaxy S10's and previous Galaxies. That's a bonus for low-light shots, as the compacted pixels combined should absorb more light and give the S20 Ultra the best low-light performance out of the three Galaxy S20 phones.
Should you want to zoom, however, the Galaxy S20 Ultra comes with a special zoom lens made up of prisms and mirrors and a 48-megapixel sensor to give an astounding 10x optical zoom. That's supposedly 10x of natural zoom without the loss of detail you get from artificial cropping from digital zooming.
Should you want to zoom even further, the S20 Ultra goes all the way to an astounding 100x zoom, made up of the natural 10x optical zoom and digital zooming.
The Galaxy S20 selfie cameras are pretty standard at 10 megapixels, but again, the S20 Ultra goes nuts with a 40-megapixel selfie camera.
The S20 Ultra differentiates itself with 30 more megapixels than the S20 and S20 Plus.
As with the rear cameras, more megapixels means more detail, and it gives you more freedom to crop into a photo after taking it without losing detail. That's for well-lit selfies, at least.
In low-light, the 40-megapixel selfie camera compacts down to a more standard 10 megapixels, which makes for larger combined pixels to absorb more light, ultimately resulting in theoretically better low-light selfies.
For reference, the selfie cameras on each Galaxy S20 model have an 80-degree field-of-view. I would have liked an extra lens for ultra-wide selfies to capture more people or more scenery, but that trend doesn't seem to have caught on, unfortunately.
The Galaxy S20 phones can record 8K video at 30 frames per second, which is likely to be overkill for most people.
Looking to differentiate itself even further from the rest of the smartphone pack, Samsung stuffed in 8K video recording at 30 frames-per-second. As I said, that's likely to be overkill for most people since 8K TVs and monitors are pretty rare and expensive. Samsung's own smartphone screens top out at WQHD 1440p resolution, which is about halfway between FHD 1080p and 4K in terms of sharpness.
Still, 8K video recording could be a nice feature to have for more serious video creators, mostly when it comes to editing. Some YouTube creators like Marques Brownlee record their videos in 8K, which gives them more wiggle room in editing. Just like the S20 Ultra's crazy 108-megapixel camera, you could crop into an 8K video without losing too much detail, for example.
8K video recording does offer some other non-video related benefits, like capturing a 33-megapixel still shot from an 8K video.
Talking in pure numbers, the Galaxy S20 Ultra — and even the S20 and S20 Plus — seem untouchable. But we'll have to check out the cameras for ourselves in real-life tests to see just how well they fare against the likes of Apple's iPhone 11 and Google's Pixel 4 phones, both of which have the best cameras on smartphones so far.
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