Samsung Galaxy S25 Poor Photo Quality - Should I Expect a Software Fix?

[Josh_B2]

So I recently upgraded from a Samsung Galaxy S22, which I loved, but the battery was dying remarkably fast after just 3 years of average use, to the new Samsung Galaxy S25, which is great in all respects except for one - the camera seems to be significantly worse than that of the S22. From my research it seems to be merely a software difference (the S25 applies AI-brushing to photos automatically and that cannot be turned off), because the camera hardware on the S25 is either the same or better in specs. See the attached photo comparisons of the same pieces of art photographed with my S22 (OLD - TOP) and S25 (NEW - BOTTOM), some are more zoomed in than others and some don't show a huge difference but it should be clear that the new S25 has significantly less detail due to AI-smoothing, and the coloration is less appealing especially in darker lighting. See especially the last photo below.

The old S22 camera was fantastic and took delightfully sharp and detailed photos - the new S25 does not, but my question is whether I might expect some sort of software fix to this problem in the near future or should I just return my phone? I really only care about battery, camera, and decent processing speed in a phone, and I don't like large phones, I would keep my S22 forever if it wasn't for battery but that's unviable and getting a new S22 seems unwise due to lack of ongoing software updates support, so I am really feeling like I don't have a good option within the Samsung world to get everything I am looking for and although I am loath to switch back to Apple after 6 years I am thinking that might be the thing to do due to this abysmal AI camera ... The S22 camera system wasn't broke, and they certainly didn't fix it. The S25 battery is stellar, the speed is terrific, and the AI features are great, but a good camera is imo an indispensable element of any phone, especially an expensive flagship model, and the S25 Ultra is both too big and too expensive for my liking -- can anyone advise me whether I might expect fixes or updates to this counterproductive and undesirable AI photography software, or am I really going to switch to an iPhone 16? Wish I could tailor-make a phone with everything the S25 has but the S22 camera system.

[Tom6068]

What camera updates has Samsung given to the S25 models other than the night photography/astrophotography issue they addressed with the February patch? Remember the touted May update which was supposed to be substantially bigger than the usual monthly patches, to address improving camera image taking quality, only for it to get a regular monthly patch. Nothing has come of it since and not one improvement in the betas to date.

[maird]

It's been my experience that effects like this end up happening when you use a camera mode with minimal manual features (i.e. a mode with maximum automation) or if you zoom the camera outside it's optical zoom range. I find it better to keep the camera in it's optical zoom range (only two back cameras have any optical zoom range). For frames like these I would use Expert Raw mode or Pro mode only. I'd either use the 200MP wide angle camera at 1x zoom only or the 50MP telephoto camera at 1x zoom only. I'd position myself to make the frame contain the subject with minimum border then crop the raw image outside the camera app to just be the intended subject (the default photo app is probably fine for cropping and I'd always save the crop as a new file rather than replace the file being cropped...so that I could retry). This approach would give you maximum pixel count frames with minimal "automation" and no optical artifacts from things like jpeg compression. The 200MP camera does have optical image stabilization and that can have the effect of smoothing some types of contrast so comparing frames from the 200MP wide angle and 50MP telephoto (each at 1x zoom) is worthwhile. Using your legs to move the phone to fill the frame instead of using zoom can really make a difference to the outcome.

The light level might be a factor but the contrast is good enough that it's not likely, though using the flash might help.

[Tom6068]

No one should have to jump through hoops using multiple settings or other modes to take simple quick shots. I agree with the OP's take that the S25 is not only a bit fuzzier, but it also does not have the vividness of the S22 shots. The OP was satisfied with the S22 shot, so the comparison is a valid one considering the S25 with its SD 8 Elite CPU and being in the newest Galaxy S line. It is fine to point out being unsatisfied with images on the S25 compared to its 3 years older model.

[Josh_B2]

So I found a sort of solution, if a very roundabout and tedious one. It seems that just by upping the sharpness on any photo once already taken by editing it in the Gallery app, it becomes just as detailed and distinct on the old S22 - basically the default setting for the S25 just has a much lower sharpness setting. I am having trouble adding images to this post reply, but the default version of a certain photo (of a painting) on my S25 is rather blurry when zoomed in, but I turned the sharpness up to +100 and then it looked almost identical to a photo of the same painting taken on my S22. So the S25 default setting with +100 sharpness applied afterwards becomes essentially identical to the S22 default setting. The frustrating thing about this is having to edit every single photo one by one because Samsung does not allow you to globally alter your default camera sharpness setting, and this is extra frustrating if you use Google photos to backup your photos because every time you edit a photo it creates a new copy in Google Photos rather than simply syncing the edits. I used OneDrive in the past which was much better but then I was running into the problem that I didn't have enough storage on my phone for all of my photos and I didn't want them stored only in OneDrive because OneDrive, unlike Google Photos, is a terrible photo viewer, although it works great as a backup option if you also want to keep all of your photos stored locally on your phone. TLDR: Edit your photos after taking them and increase the sharpness to between +70 to +100 and that will mostly undo all of the terribleness of the new Galaxy S25 default settings.

@Samsung! please let us globally change sharpness default!

[Josh_B2]

We can only hope that future Samsung phone models will prioritize sharpness like the past models did due to popular demand.

[Tom6068]

Considering the *supposed* software enhancements and the improvements on generative AI, and the result initially mentioned in the OP, think about how a far better and more powerful chip (SD 8 Elite) cannot master those images in a far more efficient, realistic and finer tuned finished photo. This is an image of two screenshots of the S22 and the S25 (as marked in the image). Not they are nearly exact in hardware. The S25 is better by one micrometer on the main camera, but 3mm less on the telephoto aspect. Interestingly, both models starting prices were/are $799.

[biguglyman]

I just bought a s25 no longer than a week ago im having problems with rapid pop up adds. I've put it on safe mode and deleted just about all the apps but it still keeps popping them up and the phone is getting hor