Samsung’s ISOCELL Zoom Anyplace for 200MP Camera Looks Amazing

Yes, we’re already talking about the successor to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, or what is bound to be Samsung’s next big flagship smartphone in the coming year.

Samsung is likely bringing its ISOCELL Zoom Anyplace technology to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The company announced the new camera feature in an official press release, though it’s been discussing the tech in various spaces over the last year. Samsung hasn’t explicitly said this sensor is coming to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but we can safely assume this is how the technology will make its way through.

The ISOCELL Zoom Anyplace is a camera feature, to be specific. It’s a part of the 200-MP Image Sensor that’s become a staple for the Ultra series over the last few generations. ISOCELL Zoom Anyplace essentially locks video and photo tracking on a moving subject while maintaining clarity in the surrounding scene. Samsung says the feature can “simultaneously capture the full field of view and zoomed-in areas on video.” Both the full-screen and zoomed-in views will be fully high-res.

The ISOCELL Zoom Anyplace ability—a catchy name you’ve got there—is partially facilitated by the sensor’s Tetra pixel capabilities, which have been the strong point of Samsung’s Ultra lineup over the last few generations. Despite the improved optical zooms of the Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and Google’s Pixel 8 Pro, Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra remains supreme in its abilities with its up to 10x zoom. But will it continue to carry the torch into the next era of smartphones?

The rumor mill has been churning out doubt, with alleged reports of dialed-down camera capabilities in the next Ultra release. At this point, all we can do is wait and see.

One other feature as a part of the new image sensor is End-to-End AI Remosiac for image capture, which Samsung says will reduce latency on those final image touchups it does in the backend. The company claims it should produce photos with richer details and colors. Here’s hoping richer doesn’t mean increased contrast and saturation because those both remain strong on Samsung’s camera algorithms.

Samsung detailed this morning a couple of changes for its 200-megapixel image sensor, the one believed to be inside the upcoming Galaxy S24 Ultra. This sensor is currently in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but this week, Samsung announced new solutions for it, powered by the help of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with its focus on AI.

One of the new solutions is called ISOCELL Zoom Anyplace, which allows for device owners to select a desired subject and the camera will automatically track and film it in high resolution. This feature will (hopefully) lead to a lot less shaky videos, which is common when filming while zoomed in. Samsung notes that this feature is made possible with Qualcomm’s AI engine as well as the sensor’s new real-time remosaic capabilities.

And speaking remosaic capabilities, you have to be a NASA scientist to understand the process that is happening, so I’ll allow Samsung to explain.

Currently, the steps the 200MP image sensor follows for processing images after shooting are: raw data output occurs before a remosaic, which then leads to image signal processing (ISP) before finishing with JPEG image output. In this process, all of the steps occur in sequence.

E2E AI Remosaic improves the process by enabling the remosaic and ISP to take place simultaneously. In other words, E2E AI Remosaic takes a process that occurs in sequence and makes it occur in parallel, thereby reducing remosaic latency by up to half. The end result is an overall faster image processing time, which reduces the shooting time of 200MP images and improves image quality.

Sounds pretty great.

Another feature S24 Ultra owners can look forward to is the ability to take full field of view videos and zoomed in videos simultaneously. Both videos are captured in high resolution, allowing for a more flexible shooting experience. Again with the science talk, Samsung explains why this feature is so important with regards to the work they have done in remosaicing.

Thanks to in-sensor zoom by Tetra pixel, users don’t need to be selective because of zoom limitations, either. Previously, with digital zoom, if the center region of interest (ROI) area was zoomed in 4x at a 12.5MP sum mode, it theoretically resulted in 0.78MP (12.5MP/16) image resolution. With in-sensor zoom, however, the selected area to be zoomed in on is selected from the entire scope and remosaiced, which allows the sensor to maintain the original 12.5MP resolution and enable video to be shot much more vividly.

I ask everyone to watch the below video, which provides an idea of what users can expect from this technology. Samsung notes that it’s still under development, but given the timing and the mention of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, expect to see it on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.