Samsung has dropped even more hints that AI will be a big deal on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, sharing a trio of teaser videos that push the new phones’ AI-enhanced zoom capabilities.
The three phones have yet to be officially announced, but we can already be pretty sure that they will be unveiled at the newly announced Galaxy Unpacked event on January 17. And by pretty safe we mean absolutely, 100% safe.
While its specifications are yet to be confirmed, recent reports have suggested that the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra may have a reduced 5x zoom, compared to the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s larger 10x zoom.
The new teasers on Samsung’s website, which have the tagline “Zoom with Galaxy AI is coming,” do nothing to dispel those rumors, but they do hint at how the S24 could compensate.
The progress
The first teaser shows a dark but colorful image of a hot air balloon in the sky, framed by what appears to be a circular camera lens.
The focus then shifts to another frame of the same image, but zoomed in more, with a tighter crop to the more visible lower parts of the balloon.
Finally, in the third frame, the image is further enlarged to reveal the people in the basket, implying a tremendous level of zoom and detail. The video then unfolds to show the three frames together, looking like the back of a Samsung Galaxy Ultra camera module.
All of which implies that the Galaxy S24 Ultra could use its ‘Galaxy AI’ to further enhance its telephoto zoom capabilities, just like the Super Res Zoom feature does on Google Pixel phones.
The second video and the third video give us a little more information by being more abstract. One shows a woman at a fair at night using a pinch gesture to enlarge a real-world teddy bear to giant proportions. This could imply that the Galaxy S24 could allow you to use artificial intelligence technology to isolate and magnify specific subjects.
While not a game-changer, this could be an example of Samsung’s suite of AI image editing tools, very similar to the AI-based Magic Eraser tool found on the latest Google Pixel devices.
The third video repeats this magnification trick; This time, the pinch-to-zoom motion is used to inflate an ice cream cone to massive proportions, which while fun, doesn’t tell us anything about how it works, especially without phones present in the trailers.
AI for everyone?
It is currently unclear which models will benefit from this Galaxy AI technology and whether it will be present in all Samsung Galaxy S24 models or reserved only for the more premium S24 Ultra model.
If included across the entire Samsung Galaxy S24 series, it could represent a serious competitor to Google’s advanced, AI-enhanced editing tools.
What’s more, if the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra features a more modest 5x zoom, the new Galaxy AI tools may need to do more heavy lifting on the software side.
This would be an interesting change from the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s optical zoom and depending on how effective this AI technology is, the results could be surprising as there are some key differences between optical and digital zoom.
Either way, Samsung’s adoption of AI technology could be an indicator of the next battlefield for smartphones in 2024, if it wasn’t already, that is.
We’ll know more on Samsung Unpacked in about a week, but if you’re as intrigued as we are, you can check out our Samsung Galaxy S24 pre-order page where you’ll find out how to pre-order. a Samsung Galaxy S24 and receive $50 in Samsung credit.
