Samsung’s next-gen Galaxy S24 series smartphones will receive a significant photo upgrade, says a new report.
According to the perennial leaker known as Ice Universe, it has now been “confirmed” that the Galaxy S24 series will be able to display HDR photos in photo albums, using a similar technology to Google’s Ultra HDR format.
The Ultra HDR format comes baked into Android 14 and allows for the display of a much wider range of colors and brightness levels than regular jpeg files, making full use of the capabilities of the smartphone’s screen. Google’s latest Pixel 8 range already takes advantage of the feature, so it makes sense that Samsung should use the same process to enhance picture quality on the forthcoming Galaxy S24 models.
What wouldn’t make sense would be for Samsung to use a technology that’s merely “similar to Ultra HDR” rather than simply enabling the Ultra HDR feature that effectively comes “free” with Android 14. Compatibility will be critical to the widespread adoption of Ultra HDR, which already works with professional editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop. More importantly, Ultra HDR files maintain full backward compatibility with the jpeg format by encoding any additional HDR information in a separate portion of the file called a “gain map.” Legacy applications can simply ignore the gain map to display the image without applying the HDR improvements.
Apple offers a similar feature in the Photos app where users with newer iPhones can select “view full HDR” to display photos in their full dynamic range. However, a key difference here is that Apple’s system doesn’t offer backward compatibility with the jpeg format and the HEIF files it uses are much harder to view in “full HDR” on non-Apple hardware.
For these reasons, I expect Samsung to enable Ultra HDR in the Galaxy 24 series rather than developing a similar but incompatible format. Earlier devices should be able to use the feature, too, unless Samsung elects to deactivate it: All that is required is an HDR-capable display paired with Android 14, making the Galaxy S23 range an obvious candidate to receive the feature in a future update.
Note that Ultra HDR is different from the HDR capture mode on your camera. Ultra HDR is about storing and displaying HDR content rather than capturing it in the first place. It’s similar to how HDR TVs can display much greater contrast and more colorful highlights when viewing HDR source material.
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