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Samsung isn’t done pushing new camera features to the Galaxy S23 series. The company recently revealed that the next update for its latest flagships will bring a 2x zoom option in portrait mode for photos. A similar feature (2X zoom) will also be available for videos with a future update. These upcoming updates should contain bug fixes and quality improvements as well.
The Galaxy S23 series has offered excellent camera performance since day one, but there’s still room for improvement. To that end, Samsung has pushed a few updates to the phones with new camera features and optimizations. A major update in late March added an autofocus speed priority feature, improved stabilization, improved low-light videos, and more. But there are more in the pipeline.
Responding to a user’s feedback on its community forums, a Samsung moderator in charge of camera-related discussions recently said that the company is working on adding 2x zoom support to Galaxy S23’s portrait mode. Currently, the latest Galaxy flagships only let you take portrait shots in 1x and 3x modes. As you’d expect, the former option uses the primary camera while the latter uses the 3x zoom camera.
However, they don’t always give you the desired result. While 1x shots may look too wide, 3x shots may be zoomed in too much for everyone’s liking. A 2x option would bring a balance between the two. It will capture a cropped shot with the primary camera. The moderator said that this feature will roll out to the Galaxy S23 lineup with the next update. Samsung has already pushed the May update to the phones in most regions. It remains to be seen if the next release will come in June or if the company plans to push a second update this month.
Galaxy S23 series will also get improvements to 2x zoom videos
In a separate community thread, the same Samsung moderator revealed that the Galaxy S23 series will get improved 2x zoom videos as well, at least the Ultra model will. When recording videos in 2x magnification, the camera app will automatically switch to 50MP resolution from 200MP before cropping the footage. This will help improve the image quality.
According to the Samsung official, this feature will roll out to the Galaxy S23 Ultra with a future update. This suggests it will not arrive with the 2x zoom option in portrait mode later this month or early next month. We may have to wait longer for it. Meanwhile, the next update is also expected to bring improvements to low-light photos and fix the halo effect issue. We will let you know when the rollout begins.