Samsung's Galaxy S5, which follows Nokia and Sony in their camera upgrades for handsets, has inherited a beefed up camera with picture quality remarkably nearly similar to that of a DSLR.
Squeezing a high-powered camera into a sleek smartphone case is a key challenge for phone makers like Samsung, Nokia, LG and Sony as they strive to make their products stand out from the congested mobile device market.
Designing a powerful smartphone camera is just one more arena for manufacturers to try and rise above the rest, and the results have begun to threaten the point-and-shoot camera business, which has had to refocus on high-end cameras for professional photographers.
Camera softwares
This year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona showed phone manufacturers using software to make up camera weaknesses like insufficient optical zoom lens and sensors for inferior images. They also employed photo manipulation on the handsets to make camera use easier than manually controlling a DSLR.
The Galaxy S5 is a heavyweight with the capability to record videos that are ultra-high definition (also known as 4K) and take quick, big-pixel pictures. It can even capture moving images or those where setting is low-lighted, and only takes 0.3 second to focus on an object. Thus, even if it is moving, it still can produce a clear picture.
With a powerful camera capable of producing high-quality videos and images, smartphone owners will likely just use their phones not just for casual picture-taking but for photography of special events, commented Chris Chute (as cited by The Vancouver Sun), a research director of International Data Corporation (IDC).
Other players in the phone camera power
The G Pro 2 phone by LG Electronics can sharpen or blur a picture, a specifically DSLR feature. This is also something that Galaxy S5 has, though not so sophisticated. Nokia also bets in the camera power trend with its Lumia 1020 phone, which debuted last year and can capture 38 megapixel images.