US models of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra phone, including ours, got a software update (version 'number' ATCH) that improves camera performance this week. After testing it, I found that autofocus performance has improved, but it still has serious problems that continue to frustrate.
The specific problem that the update fixes is continual focus hunting—when an image pulses in and out of focus—something I saw both with stills and 8K video on the previous version of the software. The phone mostly doesn't do that now. The exception I found was in a close-up shot of a cup on a saucer, where every few seconds the phone would rejudge the focus. That doesn't happen on my Galaxy S20+ or S10 models.
This cup locked in, but the focus remained a little wobbly
The new software also improves night mode timing. Where the previous software tended to default to five seconds, the new software defaults to four, like the Galaxy S20+ does. That makes night shots a bit easier to take.
Night mode shots now have more reasonable timings
However, the Ultra still takes longer to lock in focus than the S20+ does, especially in low light, and especially with zoom. At 10x zoom in low light, focus took a very noticeable amount of time to lock in. But I had trouble even at 4x with regular indoor light, as shown below.
It took a full four seconds for the focus to lock in here, and look what happens when you take a shot without waiting
It's far too easy to take photos before the focus locks in, resulting in several photos I took on the spur of the moment turning out unpleasantly blurry.
Input's Ray Wong, my former Mashable colleague, says the Ultra's core focus issue is that its 108-megapixel sensor uses the older phase-detection autofocus rather than newer and faster dual-pixel autofocus. So there's only so much that can be fixed in software.
Even with these updates, I like the Samsung Galaxy S20+ best of the S20 lineup for a wide range of reasons. The Ultra is still too big, heavy, and expensive, and the S20+ still has better autofocus. The Ultra's advantages are battery life and its performance at 10x zoom, provided you're patient enough to get that focus.
For more, see our story comparing all three Galaxy S20 models side by side.
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