When we talk about smartphone cameras, we always say how much they’ve improved since the last generation. And it’s true, the advancement is always rapid — it massively outpaces digital SLR or mirrorless camera development. But you’re still working with a tiny imaging sensor with an extremely basic set of lens elements and a relatively high megapixel count, and those three things conspire to make it difficult to take photos in anything but the best and brightest lighting conditions.
The S7 and S7 edge’s cameras have improved where it matters. There are fewer imaging megapixels — from 16 megapixels on the S6 to 12 on the S7 — but their individual size is larger at 1.4um, letting in 56 per cent more light than the 1.12um of the previous model. The lens’ maximum ( and fixed) aperture is down to f/1.7 from the f/1.9 of the S6, letting in another 25 per cent more light. And holding the two phones side by side in dark conditions, you really can tell the difference. And focusing is a huge improvement, nearly instant versus a second or more on the old phone.
Apple has always been ahead of the game in not caring how many megapixels its phone cameras have; Samsung has caught up to that trend, and it’s been a long time coming. Zoom in on a S7 photo snapped in normal lighting and you’ll see a good amount of detail for a smartphone photo — perhaps as much detail as I’ve ever seen in a smartphone JPEG. But it’s crucially not oversharpened or or oversaturated, and actually looks quite Apple-esque in its detail and colour gradation from my quick testing — and that’s quite impressive.