The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has one of the best zooms on any smartphone you can buy — in terms of both hardware and software. You get 3x and 10x optical zooms, as well as the long-running “Space Zoom,” which boosts magnification to a whopping 100x.
But Samsung is now teasing big upgrades for the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, which could easily surpass the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Samsung’s already leaning heavily into the AI angle with its upcoming smartphone, and that includes teasers for something called “Zoom with Galaxy AI."
These teasers can be found on Samsung’s website, on the page that lets users reserve their Galaxy S24 in exchange for a $50 credit. Three teasers are visible right now, the first of which shows a camera lens zooming in on a hot air balloon — and showing the people inside the basket.
The other two zoom examples are a little more abstract, and see Galaxy phone users coming face to face with a blown up teddy bear and ice cream. That suggests that Galaxy AI could enable you to enlarge subjects in your photos with a pinch, similar to the Magic Editor feature in the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
In other words, Zoom with Galaxy AI seems to be all about how AI can improve your magnified photos or magnify the items themselves.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra should already be in a very good position hardware wise. Rumor is that the 200MP main camera lens will make a comeback, alongside a 50MP telephoto lens. The high resolution should benefit digital zoom before AI gets involved, even if it turns out Samsung really is halving the optical zoom down from 10x to 5x.
But we have seen how much of a positive impact AI can have on zoomed in shots already, thanks to the likes of Google’s SuperResZoom. Assuming the Galaxy AI has been built correctly, it should complement the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s hardware for even better zoomed in shots. We should also see an improvement on the base Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus.
Meanwhile, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus don't even have a telephoto zoom, and the iPhone 15 Pro has a 3x optical zoom and the iPhone 15 Pro Max sports a new 5x tetraprism zoom. Their digital zooms are 15x and 25x, respectively.
Considering the S24 and S24 Plus won’t have nearly as impressive a camera as the S24 Ultra, they’re arguably in much greater need of AI assistance. Especially if they’re limited to 3x optical zoom and 30x digital zoom like last year’s models. But again those numbers already surpass the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.
There isn’t a whole lot more we know about Zoom with Galaxy AI right now, so we’ll just have to wait until Galaxy Unpacked on January 17 to find out more. In the meantime, you can keep up to date on the latest news and rumors in our Samsung Galaxy S24, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy Unpacked hubs.
