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Samsung gets historical with its phone camera innovation (infographic)

by Daniel Petrov / Mar 08, 2018, 9:27 AM

Samsung gets historical with its phone camera innovation (infographic)

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are the first top-shelf smartphones with variable aperture cameras, oscillating between f/1.5 and f/2.4 aperture depending on the light conditions. Samsung is so proud of its new creation, and we did indeed find it useful in extreme low-light shots, that it outed the infographic you see here to explain to us how eighteen years of cell phone camera innovation got it to the top of the pile.

Samsung has a brand new camera sensor in the Galaxy S9 and S9+, and it has already detailed all the specs, putting to rest all speculation how does it do the Super Slow Motion capture that allows its new flagships to record 720p clips with 960fps.

Basically, the new 12MP Samsung ISOCELL Fast 2L3, which is already in mass production (duh), has its own stack of fast DDR4 memory attached under the typical analog logic layer that processes the electric signal coming from the pixel array layer above it, into digital code.

The 3-stack setup is needed because recording 960fps slow-motion video results in a gigantic amount of frames that have to be stored and process quickly, and sending them to the chipset to process, and storing them in the phone's regular RAM would gum up the speed required to record the Super Slow Motion footage that the S9 is capable of.

It's a bit cumbersome to use in practice, and requires some forward planning, but it's nice to know the option is there when you need it. Check out Samsung's journey towards the very best in mobile photography.

source: Samsung

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14 Comments

1. NateDiaz

Posts: 1075; Member since: Mar 03, 2018

I remember how heavily S3's camera was advertised and that did not disappoint. Samsung's been improving ever since.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 9:31 AM 9

2. Crispin_Gatieza

Posts: 3040; Member since: Jan 23, 2014

The Sony Clie PDAs had the rotating cameras and video recording before Samsung. Maybe they were first with phones.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 9:41 AM 0

3. maherk

Posts: 6540; Member since: Feb 10, 2012

Imagine the images you'll be able to take with the S9 while using the Pixel 2 camera app. It's like magic on my S8, and I expect much better pictures from the HDR+ with the new S9 lens.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 10:01 AM 5

4. Bfrenz

Posts: 285; Member since: Aug 26, 2012

Why the Pixel camera? I'm using Note8 and the default app is much better IMO.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 10:19 AM 1

8. maherk

You need to try the Pixel Camera app, gives you Pixel 2 like portrait shots, HDR+ is much better than Samsung's HDR, and the selfie camera is tons better.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 11:24 AM 1

10. Heisenberg

Posts: 363; Member since: Feb 11, 2015

What's the direct link to download a stable version for S8?

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 1:00 PM 0

12. maherk

https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-8/themes/google-camera-hdr-portrait-t3730325 This is for the Exynos version of the S8 and Note 8. Good luck :)

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 1:26 PM 0

13. rsiders

Posts: 1775; Member since: Nov 17, 2011

Man that app has done wonders for auto shots on my V20. I'll definitely be on the look out for updates for it to load on the S9. The hardware is there but Google's processing is still ahead of everyone else's right now.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 2:36 PM 1

5. shield

Posts: 774; Member since: Sep 12, 2015

S9/+ camera is s**t !!

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 10:49 AM 2

6. skymitch89

Posts: 1449; Member since: Nov 05, 2010

They left out the Samsung Behold (released Nov 2008) which was one of the first phones with a 5MP auto-focus camera and non-smartphone with full HTML web browser. Then they left out the Samsung Memoir (released Feb 2009) which was like a "big brother" to the Behold which was one of the first phones with an 8MP camera with a xenon flash.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 11:02 AM 1

7. skymitch89

That's not to mention that they're lying about their "first smartphone". They had the Android powered Samsung Galaxy line before they came out with the Galaxy S line. The Samsung Behold 2 was a variant of the Galaxy line.

posted on Mar 08, 2018, 11:05 AM 0

9. smallworld

Posts: 517; Member since: Jul 13, 2012

Actually Phonearena you should do some research. Nokia had variable aperture smartphones in their N-series like 10 years ago. Even if they were very different from today's smartphones, they were still smartphones.