Samsung's Expert RAW camera app that was announced alongside the Galaxy S21 Ultra in 2021 is coming to several flagship Galaxy smartphones this year. At the Galaxy S22 Ultra launch event, Samsung announced the app would be available for all S22 series devices, and that's now been expanded to even more Galaxy phones. Expert RAW is a camera app that allows users to have more granular control over their photos. Users will be able to tweak various settings like ISO, shutter speed, white balance, EV, manual focus, and more to get that perfect shot. In addition, Expert RAW features a wider dynamic range and JPEG and RAW formats. The app even offers integrations with Adobe Lightroom, letting users make edits to RAW images.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is the brand's top-end smartphone and boasts some serious camera chops. Its rear camera specifications include a 108MP primary camera, 12MP ultra-wide camera, and two 10MP telephoto cameras, one with 3x and one with 10x optical zoom. It also packs a high-resolution 40MP front camera sensor. The phone gets a new 'Nightography' mode that further improves low light photography, as well as advanced portrait photography. With the Expert RAW, users can shoot 16-bit RAW photos from any of the Galaxy S22 Ultra's cameras.
A post on the Samsung Community Forum (spotted by XDA Developers) has confirmed the smartphones that will receive support for the Expert RAW app, as well as the release timeline. The Galaxy S22 series, which includes the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus, and Galaxy S22 Ultra will receive the app on February 25. This will be followed by the Galaxy S21 Ultra in early March and the Galaxy Z Fold 3 in April. The Galaxy S20 Ultra, Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Fold 2 will get the Expert RAW app by the first half of 2022, presumably before June.
Samsung Expert RAW App Requirements
Given Expert RAW's advanced abilities, supported smartphones are required to meet minimum hardware requirements. These include the Exynos 990/Snapdragon 865 or higher chipset, 8GB RAM, and a telephoto lens with at least 2x optical zoom and Bayer RAW support. Samsung states that the Expert RAW app requires advanced internals for Multi RAW shooting and image processing. This means that a few flagships such as the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and Galaxy Note20 don't make the cut since the 64MP telephoto lens on those models supports only 1.1 zoom.
Samsung's flagship smartphones already offer some of the best smartphone photography experiences, and the availability of an app tailored to make use of that high-end hardware is sure to please shutterbugs. The wider rollout of the Expert RAW app is just one of many benefits Samsung is bringing to its users. Samsung has become the top Android brand when it comes to providing software updates for its smartphones. It recently announced that several Galaxy devices would be eligible for four years of Android updates, including several affordable and flagship smartphones, tablets, and even Galaxy Watch models. The brand also announced that devices launched after 2019 would get four years of security updates, while some flagships like the Galaxy S21 and S22 series would get five years of security updates.
Source: Samsung Community, XDA Developers