Leaker: Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has even more camera upgrades

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra wide view render

(Image credit: SmartPrix)

published 22 January 2023

We already know that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is shaping up to be one of the best phones for photography, and a new last-minute leak says there will be some important video updates too. Samsung's flagship phone, which is expected to launch on 1 February, is getting better hi-res video recording and better heat control too.

The details come via well-known leaker Ice Universe on Chinese social network Weibo, as reported by GSM Arena, and they seem to be the real deal.

Why the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra will shoot better video

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra currently shoots in Portrait Mode at a resolution of 1080p and 30 frames per second (fps). According to Ice Universe, the Galaxy S23 ups that to 4K at the same frame rate and also has much better separation between the subject and their background. That's more important than it might sound: many reviewers and users have reported that Portrait Mode in the S23 Ultra falls a long way short of the Cinematic Mode in the iPhone 14 Pro.

Non-portrait video is getting a boost too, from 8K at 24fps to the same resolution at 30fps. And the leaker says that the thermal performance of the Ultra is significantly improved too, which should mean less likelihood of overheating when you're shooting.

What's currently unclear is whether the non-Ultra models will be getting the same improvements, because only the Ultra is getting Samsung's new ISOCELL HP2 200MP image sensor. We'll find out soon enough: at the time of writing, Samsung Unwrapped is just over a week away.

TOPICS

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).