Samsung suggests it will replace Sony's sensors with its own on Galaxy S24 telephoto cameras

Filings made by Samsung in the U.K. and South Korea provide a strong hint that the company will replace the Sony IMX image sensors it uses for the telephoto cameras on its flagship Galaxy phones with Sammy's own in-house ISOCELL sensors. As per SamMobile, the company recently filed for trademark protection in the U.K. and South Korea for the name ISOCELL Zoom.

There have been rumors that one of the two telephoto cameras on the Galaxy S23 Ultra will be replaced. Most likely the 3x telephoto lens will be gone and the periscope lens will stick around. This type of lens is folded inside the phone and uses prisms that bend light from the lens and help send it to the image sensor. This allows the camera to deliver 10x optical zoom even with the space limitations of the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

So the speculation is that Samsung will leave the periscope lens on the Galaxy S24 Ultra and with hybrid zoom (using optical zoom, digital zoom, and AI), the camera will deliver 150x Space Zoom. It also will reportedly feature a variable zoom aperture between f/2.5 and f/2.9.

It isn't unusual to use the ISOCELL name when discussing a particular camera used on a high-end Samsung phone. For example, returning to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the primary camera is backed by the 200MP ISOCELL HP2 image sensor. But the trademark applications are the first time that Samsung has used the word Zoom following the ISOCELL brand. Both 10MP telephoto cameras on the Galaxy S23 Ultra are backed by the Sony IMX754 image sensor.

One reason why Samsung might want to use its own ISOCELL image sensors for its flagship phones instead of using Sony's sensors could be the same reason why there is talk that the Galaxy S24 line could be powered by the Exynos 2400 SoC in most markets. That reason is money. Samsung would save money by using its in-house image sensors instead of the Sony IMX sensors and the money it saves could be used toward hiking the amount of memory or storage offered with the Galaxy S24 line.

The money Samsung saves by equipping the Galaxy S24 series with the Exynos 2400 chipset in most markets instead of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy will supposedly be used to offer all the models in Sammy's 2024 flagship series a minimum storage option of 256GB. Also, the extra money might be used to raise the amount of RAM to 12GB on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+, and to start the Galaxy S24 Ultra with 16GB of RAM.