Forget Titanium! Galaxy S24 should steal this new iPhone 15 Pro camera feature

With its 10x ultra-telephoto camera, Samsung's S23 Ultra is the king of long-range zoom. However, Apple recently surprised us by pulling some sophisticated sensor cropping tricks in the short, 1x-2x range with the new iPhone 15 Pro. This camera improvement seemed so useful, it kind of overshadowed the big design change we knew was coming, namely - the advent of titanium in phones.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are here and boy does the new titanium frame make a huge difference in weight. Apple’s top-tier flagships had been getting progressively chubbier, to the point where ‘lighter weight’ moved towards the top of our wishlist for changes to be implemented by Apple.

Thankfully, Cupertino heard our cries and replaced the fancy-but-hefty stainless steel frame with a slightly less flashy but instantly likable titanium frame – a first for the industry.

The difference of 10-20 grams looks small on paper, but if you’ve had the chance to hold the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, you’d know that the titanium frame has made a huge difference in terms of weight. While every bit as premium as before, Apple’s finest now feel way more manageable: the iPhone 15 Pro (187g) has now moved closer to the vanilla iPhone 15 (171g), while the iPhone 15 Pro Max (221g) will no longer pull your pants down if you happen to slide it into a pocket.

I love the new titanium frames, that was an innovation Apple’s flagships really, really needed.

iPhone 15 Pro's advanced camera sensor cropping feature is the hottest new camera tech this year

However!

While we’re hearing rumors of Samsung looking to potentially replace the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s Armor Aluminum with titanium, I believe there’s a better, more camera-related area where Samsung absolutely needs to focus its efforts if it wants to make a bigger splash.

This year, Apple announced the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max with improved 48MP camera sensors and a brand new A17 Pro chipset. This combo, Apple says, has made it possible to achieve new optical-quality sensor crop magnifications: the 2x crop that made a debut on the iPhone 14 Pro is now joined by a 1.2x 28mm and 1.5x 35mm optical-quality zoom levels.

This means that if you take a 1.2x or a 1.5x photo with the iPhone 15 Pro, you’ll still end up with a full-resolution 24MP shot (hence, “optical quality”), while getting the full benefits of different focal lengths. Why a 2x sensor crop is achievable with the A16 Bionic, but 1.2x and 1.5x require an A17 Pro chip, I don’t know, but hey, maybe Apple will be generous enough to grace next year’s vanilla iPhone 16 and 16 Plus with these new in-between zoom steps.

Implementing this feature allowed Apple to do bold things such as to promote the iPhone 15 Pro as having a total of “7 pro lenses”! Beyond the marketing speak, though, the functional and creative flexibility this advanced sensor cropping functionality enables is unparalleled.

And this is exactly what I think Samsung needs to lift straight from the iPhone 15 Pro and put on all Galaxy S24 phones next year. Yes, Samsung is currently king in long-range 10x zoom, but what about more mainstream, short-range focal lengths, like those between 1x and 2x? That's where I think the South Korean company can try to make its camera offering a bit more sophisticated.

The Galaxy S24 should steal iPhone 15 Pro’s advanced camera sensor cropping for greater creative flexibility

Samsung has at least part of the hardware required to make this work. For example, the Galaxy S23 Ultra comes with a powerful 200MP camera sensor, which provides more than enough resolution to pull all sorts of sensor cropping tricks, and this precise ISOCELL HP2 sensor is rumored to return with the S23 Ultra.

Perhaps Samsung can offer even more optical-quality focal lengths on the Galaxy S24 Ultra?

That, I think, could be an important differentiating factor not only against Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, but also against the smaller Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus. While we can’t be 100% sure yet, rumor has it that the S24 and S24 Plus will again be equipped with 50MP main cameras, which is technically enough resolution to pull off iPhone 15 Pro-level sensor cropping (1.2x, 1.5x, 2x).

The missing link in the equation is the chipset powering the devices, because, by the looks of it, it’s a crucial component in pulling this camera trickery off.

While last year all Galaxy S23 users around the world were treated to the same top-shelf Android chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, Samsung is said to once again offer its top smartphone line with two different processors, depending on the market: Snapdragon 8 Gen3 for Galaxy in the US and Exynos 2400 in Europe. The ISP (image signal processor) in Exynos seemed to lag behind the Snapdragon one in recent years, but who knows, maybe Samsung’s chipset design division has caught up and is now confident enough to arm the S24 with its newest Exynos.

Whichever SoC comes on board of your Galaxy, I believe it should be capable enough to allow for sensor cropping, if tuned correctly. After all, the Tensor G2 in the Pixel 7 series does sensor cropping, and it’s made by Samsung.

This brings me to the final point, and that’s getting the software part of the feature right, which is surely not an easy task. Apple and Google are traditionally strong companies at squeezing maximum value out of limited hardware resources, and they usually accomplish that via extremely smart software design and algorithms. Samsung tends to be more of a hardware powerhouse, but its software is by no means weak. In fact, there are numerous software UI/UX areas which work better and more seamlessly on Galaxy phones than on Pixel phones, so I wouldn’t be too concerned.

At the end of the day, I’m almost willing to bet money Samsung is going to deliver strong sensor cropping functionality on the Galaxy S24 line. This is the camera feature to get this and next year. Yes, it’s enabled by state-of-the-art hardware, but Apple has shown how this hardware can be used to create an extremely user-centric feature that can be easily enjoyed not just by camera enthusiasts, but pretty much everyone.

What do you think is this the top new feature too forward to in the Galaxy S24 line, or do you think Samsung needs to focus its efforts on some other area? If yes, what’s that? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments!