Camera Concerns (Premium)

Samsung has already promised to improve the quality of the Galaxy S20 Ultra camera experience over time. That’s a bad sign, given the rich history of smartphone makers and these kinds of promises. And that it hasn't even shipped this handset to customers yet.

“The Galaxy S20 features a groundbreaking, advanced camera system,” a Samsung statement notes. “We are constantly working to optimize performance to deliver the best experience for consumers. As part of this ongoing effort, we are working on a future update to improve the camera experience.”

Why would Samsung issue such a statement?

The first reviewers have routinely pointed out that Samsung’s new S20 flagship, which provides 108X hybrid zoom and a so-called Space Zoom feature, has some serious camera quality issues.  And that’s troubling, given the overwhelmingly superficial nature of such reviews: If these first impressions based on just days of experience have already uncovered problems, then they’re probably serious.

Those issues include slow autofocus performance, unnatural-looking skin smoothing, and other image processing problems.

Because camera quality is my number one concern with any new smartphone flagship, and because unfixable problems are often quietly brushed aside by manufacturers’ claims of coming software improvements, I’m a bit sensitive to this particular kind of problem. And there is ample precedent for my worry.

I’ll cite two obvious examples.

In 2016, Apple released the iPhone 7 Plus with an unfinished and disappointing Portrait Mode feature that never lived up to Apple’s promises despite multiple software updates and subsequent hardware and software changes in later iPhone models. Today, Portrait Mode still struggles with edge detection, especially with hair, and other manufacturers have already surpassed the iPhone in this computational photography capacity.

Then, in 2019, the OnePlus 7 Pro inexplicably high score from the camera experts at DxOMark but delivered terrible real-world performance; OnePlus claimed that DxOMark used newer camera software than what was shipped to customers originally, but no software updates ever fixed the problem or explained the suspicious DxOMark rating.

The thing is, both of those smartphones are otherwise notable for being best-in-class in their day. The iPhone 7 Plus, I wrote at the time, was “very much the apex of the smartphone food chain … clearly the best smartphone overall.” And the OnePlus 7 Pro was “one of the best smartphones in the market and an unparalleled value.”

But in each case, there was just one problem. The camera experience in each had issues that their makers promised to fix with software updates. And then never did.

Which brings me back to Samsung. Oh, Samsung.

Am I going to cancel my Galaxy S20 Ultra preorder?

Right now, I don’t know. This damn thing costs $1400, and while I’m not going to navel-gaze again at the skyrocketing pr...