Yesterday, Samsung released a timeline giving us a view of its progress in terms of camera phones for the past 18 years. The infographic can be found below this post.
The South Korean tech giant announced its first camera phone way back in the year 2000, the Samsung SCH-V200. The phone allowed users to store up to 20 photos and you needed a computer to actually see the 0.11 MP photos.
Then a couple of years later, Samsung unveiled a flip phone with a camera that was embedded right into the screen’s hinge (SCH-X590). This allowed the camera to be rotated freely between the front and the back, introducing Samsung’s first phone that could take selfies.
The following year, the company introduced a flip phone whose display could be turned to a landscape orientation (SCH–V420). These sets of phones gives us the real innovation in hardware.
The Beginning Of Multiple Camera Features
Finally, in 2010, Samsung’s first Galaxy S smartphone was Samsung’s first phone to feature a wide array of photo modes: Panorama, Stop Motion, and Cartoon Shot. The touchscreen was a huge innovation for smartphone cameras since they changed the way we interact with smartphone cameras.
Samsung brought burst-shooting with the Galaxy S III. It could shoot up to 20 photos with its 8MP sensor. Soon after came the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. It had a 16MP sensor with 10 optical zoom (no hybrid zoom here) on its 24-240 mm lens. Sadly, Samsung only made one Galaxy Zoom phone. The Galaxy Camera came too and had two Wi-Fi only iterations.
The Galaxy S5 brought Samsung’s fastest autofocus at 0.3 seconds with real-time HDR. Then, the Galaxy S7 brought dual-pixel autofocusing which drastically changed the accuracy and speed of autofocus while taking photos and videos. It was also one of the best low-light smartphones of 2016.
The Start Of Samsung’s Dual-Camera System
The Galaxy Note8 was the first Samsung flagship to have a dual-camera system. With it, it brought new shooting modes like Live Focus, hybrid zoom, and improved low-light performance.
And finally, likely the main reasons why Samsung released this timeline, is to promote the Galaxy S9 which brings a variable-aperture camera system to smartphones. It can switch between a brighter f/1.5 aperture and a slower f/2.4 aperture. This, and Samsung introduced 960 fps slow-motion capturing.