Samsung teases 'amazing' camera in new flagship phone

A month ago, I wrote about the iPhone's camera and how instrumental it is to many of the things that make that bestselling device so appealing. Today, Apple's most direct competitor, Samsung, has reiterated its long history of developing cameraphones and promised to deliver nothing less than "the future of cameras." In a post by Samsung's camera R&D chief DongHoon Jang, the company promises its 2015 flagship phone "will be intelligent and do all the thinking for users, allowing them to take amazing pictures under any conditions, without having to worry about anything more than just pressing the shutter button."

Imaging technology has been a traditional strength for Samsung's flagship smartphones, and the latest Galaxy Note 4 has marked an appreciable upgrade after a couple of years of relative stagnation in image quality. Now Samsung seems intent to step things up another notch, with the blog post also discussing the rising importance of the front-facing camera for taking selfies. Much of this sounds like what LG is already doing with the G3 and G Flex 2: both feature an interface-free camera mode where just tapping on the screen focuses and takes the picture. Samsung's promising a similar level of automated simplicity, while also hinting at an increase in its camera resolution by pointing to the progressive increase in megapixels in its Galaxy S line.

It's a little disheartening to see Samsung define its camera progress by the number of megapixels in each year's model. The thing that makes the iPhone so popular is its ease and quickness of use, which Samsung is evidently looking to address, though perhaps not to an extent where that might compromise its usual push to be a spec leader as well. On the other hand, it's good see Samsung putting an emphasis on the camera as a leading feature in a device that's expected to have an all-new metal design and three-sided screen. The sixth-generation Galaxy S is set to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress on March 1st, which is when we'll find out exactly how many mega pixels it has and what sort of images they can capture.