The Galaxy S23 Ultra and its new selfie camera is put against that of the Pixel 7 Pro

A user who has managed to somehow get their hands on the Galaxy S23 Ultra ahead of time has taken a selfie. Not only that, but he has also taken a selfie with Google’s Pixel 7 Pro flagship and put them side by side so we can compare.

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Edwards Urbina and his Tweet have the pot stirred. The main question here is how did they manage to get a Galaxy S23 Ultra before the official Unpacked event in February? That, however, is a mystery for another time, as we’ve got a photo to sink our teeth in.

From the details on the post itself, this selfie is presumably taken with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, and not the Galaxy S23 or the Galaxy S23 Plus. As such, it only makes sense to rival the result against another premium Android powerhouse, such as the Pixel 7 Pro, instead of the Pixel 7.

So, let’s compare the results! Pixel owners will probably be quick to notice that the front-facing camera’s portrait mode hasn’t been utilized here. We can tell that this is the case from the viewing angle, as when it's enabled, the crop is more zoomed in to the subject, and a bokeh effect is applied.

Now, while no sign of bokeh is visible on the photo on the right — the alleged Galaxy S23 Ultra photo — we do see that there is a zoom towards the subject, with the center of the photo being evened out. This certainly looks like what other phones would produce when utilizing a selfie portrait mode, and is what Samsung flagships typically produce when they’ve detected a human face.

We can’t judge Ed here, as Galaxy phones are infamous for their fast scene recognition — as in, they do their best to understand what users are trying to snap, and adjust their settings accordingly, even switching modes if required. This isn’t anything new, phones as far back as the Galaxy S20 have had this feature, but the flagship series has gotten faster in subject detection.


Both photos have received some post-processing. Both the Galaxy flagships and the Pixel line are infamous for astounding software improvements of taken shots. Unfortunately, the subject has slightly tilted between the shots — the wall behind them and the plants are angled differently — so we can’t really say it's a perfect one-to-one comparison.

Still though, the Galaxy S23 Ultra selfie produced a much clearer picture, with extra effort being put on the subject’s face. We can see details on both of the images However, the selfie produced via the Pixel suffers some washed out colors and lack of sharpness.

This is likely the result of clashing photo modes, but it may be tied to changes in lighting or even an unstable hand. There is also a point to be made that the Pixel 7 Pro has a 10.8 selfie snapper, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 12MP sensor out front.

Well, we don’t have to wait much longer to find out. Well, those of you who are watching the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event online in February will have to trust the people who’ve managed to be there live, but one thing is for sure: this is just the start of many photo comparisons to come.