The next series of Samsung flagships isn’t coming anytime soon, as usual, they’re expected to launch in January 2025, but the rumor mill is already churning away. The latest Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra camera upgrade rumor suggests that we’ll see two key camera improvements that were surprisingly missing from the S24 Ultra.
Prolific leaker Ice Universe uploaded a Weibo post (via Android Authority) that claims the S25 Ultra will still feature a quad camera setup on its rear, in contrast to earlier claims that it’ll downsize to a triple camera array. The post suggests that the main and telephoto aren’t changing, while the ultrawide and 3x telephoto get a much-needed upgrade.
With the S24 Ultra, one of the best Samsung phones at the time of writing, Samsung switched out the 10x telephoto for a higher-resolution 5x telephoto with a larger sensor. The 10MP 3x telephoto, meanwhile, has remained unchanged since the S21 Ultra. In 2024, a 10MP resolution isn’t going to wow anyone, and the small sensor results in poor low-light performance, too. So switching that out for a 50MP lens is definitely an exciting prospect.
The 12MP ultrawide is also fairly low resolution, by today’s standards. The move to a 50MP sensor brings the phone in line with other flagships like the Pixel 8 Pro and Honor Magic6 Pro, as well as having the potential to shoot video at 8K resolution.
Personally, I’d love to see Samsung ditch that 200MP main snapper in favor of a larger sensor, but it doesn’t sound like that’s happening anytime soon. We’re sure to hear plenty more about the S25 series in the coming months, but if you want to check out something you can buy right now, see our guides to the best Xiaomi phones and the best Google Pixel phones. Or, if you want to keep looking toward the future, see our guide to everything we know so far about the iPhone 16.