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Digital Camera World
Digital Camera World
Leonie Helm

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra rumored to get a massive megapixel upgrade

Close up of cameras on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra phone held in a hand with purple lights blurred in the background.

Over the past few months, a load of leaks about the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S25 have been circulating. 

The speculation includes major upgrades like a bigger screen and improved artificial intelligence features, as well as a quickly rectified rumor that the new model will drop one of its rear cameras

The latest rumor from regular leaker Ice Universe, who cited an unnamed source, is that Samsung will upgrade the 3x telephoto and ultra-wide modules to 50 MP sensors on the Galaxy S25, when it launches in early 2025. 

This upgrade is a significant jump in megapixel count from the 10 MP and 12 MP sensors of the Galaxy S24 Ultra (meanwhile rumors suggest Apple will have stuck to 12MP for their tele camera on the iPhone 16, expected in September 2024).

It’s difficult to determine for sure how these upgrades will affect photo and video capturing with so little to go on, however, the image quality should be improved in various areas.

Previous Galaxy smartphones have faced criticism of their cameras in recent years for “disappointing” processing and shutter lag by reviewers such as 9 to 5 Google

Other rumors surrounding the Galaxy S25 include improvements to AI features.

It’s thought that Samsung’s own Exynos 2500 processor, which is rumored to be included in some of the Galaxy S25 models, will come with a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), which is designed by Google.

Part of the chipset that handles AI tasks, the TPU works in a similar way to how a GPU (graphics processing unit) handles visuals. The more AI processing a handset can do itself, the faster and more efficient the user experience, and less data needs to be stored in the cloud (or exchanged over an imperfect connection).

Whether Samsung will equip the Galaxy S25 with its own chipsets or those from Qualcomm is as yet unknown. The Galaxy S23 series all used Qualcomm, however, the Galaxy S24 phones only used Qualcomm CPUs in Canada, the U.S and China, with the exception of the Ultra.

If the upgrades are as rumored, and the camera and AI functions are vastly improved, then this new Samsung Galaxy S25 could give Apple a serious run for its money.

Check out our choices for the best camera phones on the market, whether you're looking for the best Samsung phones or the best iPhones for photography

Whatever model you choose, we've also got you covered with our list of the best lenses for iPhone and Android camera phones

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