Camera blur is a photographer's worst nightmare – and owners of Samsung's flagship phones seem to be suffering from the issue due to no fault of their own.
Users of the Samsung Galaxy S23 (opens in new tab) and Samsung Galaxy S23+ (opens in new tab), which in many respects are two of the best camera phones (opens in new tab) available, are reporting an issue with the rear camera where the center of the image is pin sharp, but towards the corners it isn't as sharp as it should be.
While the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (opens in new tab) recently got a free camera upgrade in the latest round of firmware, the 50MP rear camera on the Galaxy S23 and S23+ has a problem with keeping the entire scene in focus. Users report that while the center of the scene looks sharp and focused as you would expect, the photos are blurry at the sides and edges.
It's been reported by Sam Mobile (opens in new tab) that these issues are only affecting S23 and S23+ units made in Vietnam. The website was also able to replicate the blurring issue when photographing documents and text on devices made in India, but could not recreate the issues while taking photographs.
Notebookcheck (opens in new tab)also tried to replicate these finds with similar success with two images (seen above and below) from the camera of the Galaxy S23+, in particular, showing that Samsung definitely has a potential quality problem.
Incidentally, Notebookcheck thought this could just be an issue with the JPEG format – but, on closer inspection, the problem also occurs in RAW mode, with the blurriness on the Galaxy S23+ photo being retained as a DNG file.
Samsung is yet to reply to these findings but, if the issue continues, we don't think it's something that can't be fixed with a software update.
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