A decade of Samsung Galaxy S camera technology

The Samsung Galaxy S III was introduced 10 years ago, in May 2012. The S-series has changed dramatically over the last decade, and we wanted to measure that change. We decided to keep things easy today and focus on the camera because there is so much to cover.

The third-generation S-phone was released with a single 8MP rear camera and a 1.9MP front-facing camera. This was before the days of multi-camera setups, optical image stabilisation, and other such features.

In truth, OIS wouldn't debut until the Galaxy S6 in 2015. The Galaxy S9+ introduced the first telephoto lens to the series in 2018, while the Galaxy S10 5G added an ultra wide camera the following year.

A brief note: the Galaxy S10+ featured an ultrawide camera as well, but we're just looking at the finest of each iteration. In 2019, the S10 5G was released, including 3D ToF sensors on the front and rear. That didn't last long, as Samsung finally reverted to a computational technique to determining object distances. Another feature that was only available for a brief time was the dual aperture, which let the Galaxy S8+ and S9+ to switch between f/2.0 for daytime images and f/1.5 for nighttime shots.

These two are also responsible for another short-lived fad: the front-facing iris scanner. This was utilised for biometric authentication until under-display fingerprint readers were available in the S10 series.

The first Galaxy S phone with a periscope appeared the next year (the Galaxy S4 zoom doesn't count because it didn't have a periscope style lens and, to be honest, it was more camera than phone).

The periscope on the Galaxy S20 Ultra featured a 103mm focal length and a 4x optical magnification. That was twice as much as prior tele lenses, but it left too much of a gap for digital zoom to fill on the primary sensor. As a result, Samsung employed both a conventional telephoto lens (now at 3x) and a periscope with the Galaxy S21 Ultra forward.