The Galaxy S22 Ultra zoom camera sensors are actually smaller now
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Surprisingly, besides its aforementioned obvious advantages before the S21 Ultra's camera kit, the new set on the Galaxy S22 Ultra is actually a hardware downgrade in when it comes to the two zoom camera sensors.
Instead of the 1/3.24" 10MP Samsung S5K3J1 sensors on the S21 Ultra, Samsung decided to go with 1/3.52" Sony IMX754 sensors for the 2x telephoto and 10x periscope zoom cameras on the S22 Ultra, according to Golden Reviewer.
Thus, the S22 Ultra has a sensor with 1.12 micron pixel size, while the S21 Ultra before it had larger, 1.22 micron pixels for the zoom camera sensors. The focal length equivalents are also different - longer 9.0mm for the 3x lens and 30.6mm for the 10x lens on the S21 Ultra - but shorter 7.9mm for the 3x zoom camera and 27.2mm for the 10x periscope zoom lens.
Granted, such small sensor and pixel size differences aren't going to affect the photo quality all that much with today's image processing and software algorithms, yet it'd be interesting to learn why did Samsung decide to go with the Sony sensor alternatives on its new flagship phone.
One possible reason is that Samsung had to fit both the same 5000mAh battery and an S Pen stylus silo in the S22 Ultra and it had to use space-saving solutions wherever it could. Alternatively, the chip shortages could have been a reason, and we'd be curious to learn if the Exynos and Snapdragon models have different sensors as has happened many times before.
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