Galaxy S24 Ultra owners are being treated to some significant camera improvements thanks to Samsung’s latest downloadable firmware update.
According to Samsung’s South Korean community support forum, the update includes camera optimizations for both image quality and usability, along with improved software stability. The download weighs in at around 800MB to 1GB in size, depending on region, and comes bundled with Google’s April 1 2024 security patch—meaning Samsung’s flagship smartphones are receiving it before Google’s own Pixel devices.
In addition to improved stability for existing functions, Samsung promises the following improvements to the camera (translated from Korean):
- The tone of the night environment has been improved.
- The low-light contour and color expression of the Expert RAW app has been improved.
- Improved text clarity when using zoom scale in photo mode.
- 480×480 resolution has been added to support instant slow motion in smaller-sized videos.
It’s important to note that some low-light improvements rely on Samsung’s Expert RAW app, which must be updated or downloaded separately. The Expert RAW update should be available soon for those who have installed the system update. Samsung explains in a forum comment that the new improvements to Expert RAW rely on updates found in the new system update, so you’ll have to install both to take advantage of any improvements in image quality.
These upgrades confirm an earlier leak from the tipster Ice Universe, who first hinted at the camera updates early last week. However, there’s no sign of the “underage mode” mentioned in the same report.
I conducted two quick tests capturing text at high zoom levels to compare the results before and after the update. At 30x zoom, text becomes slightly softer at the edges but loses the inaccurate, oversharpened look captured by the previous firmware version.
When switching up to a more extreme 100x zoom, neither version produces fully legible text, but the results from the upgraded firmware are clearly superior, with more words becoming legible.
The new firmware also corrected a slight magenta color cast present in the original versions at both 30x and 100x zoom.
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