Samsung have been caught in a viral Reddit post showing how much processing they do on photos of the moon.
The company have become known for “space zoom” on their phones, which is said to allow users to take detailed snaps of the moon. But a recent Reddit post shows how much processing they’re doing, with some pundits saying the pics are straight-up fake, which is a tricky line to take in this age of filters, AI and Photoshop.
This all started when a Reddit user created an intentionally blurry pic of the moon, displayed it on a computer screen, then took a shot of it with a Samsung S23 Ultra.
As shown below, the first image showed no detail, but the resulting photo presented a crisp, clear “photo” of the moon.
Indeed, the S23 Ultra added details that weren’t there before, without upscaling blurry pixels or retrieving lost data. In short, it presented a new fake moon.
Samsung’s moon photography has been controversial since they released a 100x “space zoom” in the S20 Ultra in 2020. Indeed, they have been accused of copying and pasting prestored textures onto shots of the moon to deliver their shots, but Samsung say the process is more involved.
Input magazine went into this in 2021, with the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Samsung told them no image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo.
Still, they did say they use AI to detect the moon’s Prescence and that offers a detail enhancing function by reducing blurs and noises.
They later said, the vital step that takes us from a photograph of a blurry moon to a sharp moon uses a “detail improvement engine function” to “effectively remove noise and maximise the details of the moon to complete a bright and clear picture of the moon.”
So yeah, it seems they take a pic with blurry details and then upscale it using AI, which kind of sounds fake.
Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold is set to be the first foldable phone to gain a dust resistance certification, which has until now been very tricky for the form factor to achieve.
It’s said a new “raindrop” hinge design could let Samsung add to the device’s IPX8 certification, replacing the X with a number. This could be due to the hinge allowing the phone to fold totally flat, preventing dust building up within it.
Though noting is concrete with this concept yet, it would be a significant step forward.
