Samsung Electronics has declared an era of AI democratization by equipping the Galaxy S26 series with various artificial intelligence features, while camera performance has also improved significantly through AI technology evolution.
Cho Sung-dae, Vice President of Samsung Electronics' MX Business Division and Head of Visual Solutions Team, introduced the camera technology in the Galaxy S26 series at a press briefing held in San Francisco on the 25th (local time).
AI was the key to advancing 'Photo Assist,' one of the most notable features in the Galaxy S26 series, beyond its predecessor. With Photo Assist, a half-eaten cake can be captured in photos as if it were new or whole. Samsung Electronics has focused on developing Galaxy AI's pre- and post-processing technology to achieve the best generative editing performance.
Through precise selection and image understanding, editing large areas has become easier and more sophisticated. For example, even without exact settings, AI identifies what users want to remove and precisely selects the area to delete.
AI recognizes not only subjects but also related information such as shadows and light reflections, delivering more natural and polished results. In photos where half a face is obscured, AI can understand the entire image and naturally generate the remaining half based on the visible portion.
Users can visualize imagined scenes using multimodal inputs including text, voice, and object images for compositing. If a user wants to add a dog to a family photo with a Christmas atmosphere, they can select a dog photo and input: "Add the dog and create a snowy Christmas Eve mood."
In this series, Nightography video was designed with both hardware and AI improvements, allowing users to experience greater differences in brightness and clarity in darker environments. AI precisely controls noise and detail on hardware that captures more light, elevating night video quality.
The AI-based image processing engine 'ProVisual Engine' has also been enhanced. A dedicated block was added to the application processor that preemptively removes fine particles according to each sensor's noise characteristics before Image Signal Processor processing. This technology effectively removes noise when shooting night skies while better preserving building outlines and textures.
To strengthen exposure stability—a critical element in night video—approximately 10,000 video scenes were collected. An AI-Based Exposure system trained on up to 1.3 million scenes through data augmentation techniques was added to the ProVisual Engine.
Image quality has also improved. The Galaxy S26 Ultra camera features a 200-megapixel wide-angle lens, 50-megapixel ultra-wide lens, 50-megapixel telephoto lens (5x optical zoom), and 10-megapixel telephoto lens (3x optical zoom), establishing an industry-leading camera system.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra's 200-megapixel wide-angle lens has an aperture of F1.4, and the 50-megapixel telephoto lens (5x optical zoom) has an aperture of F2.9—47% and 38% brighter respectively compared to predecessors. The previous S25 Ultra featured a 200-megapixel wide-angle lens (F1.7) and 50-megapixel telephoto lens (F3.4, 5x optical zoom). Generally, lower aperture values (F) mean a physically larger aperture opening, allowing more light through the lens for brighter photos and sharper subjects.