The Galaxy S25 Ultra tops our list of the best camera phones you can buy, but it sounds like Samsung is considering a way to make its successor even more flexible, by reviving a feature last seen in 2019.
On the Chinese social network Weibo, the prolific and usually accurate leaker Ice Universe writes that Samsung is “considering returning variable aperture to [the] main camera” of the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
The size of a phone’s aperture controls how much light the sensor takes in, which in turn impacts the field of view available. Assuming this is destined for the main camera, a wider aperture would create a shallow depth of field with a brighter image, while a narrower one might allow you to maintain focus on a subject from a shorter range.
It can also have a positive knock-on benefit for video capture, as it reduces the jarring jumps you get when moving from bright conditions to dark and vice versa.
In other words, while it may sound quite niche, it allows greater flexibility in the right hands and Samsung actually experimented with the feature over two generations in the late 2010s.
In 2018, a variable rate aperture arrived with the Galaxy S9 series, got a second outing with the S10 phones (pictured above), and then vanished for the S20 series.
It did, however, also appear on the Galaxy Note 9 and Note 10.
The implementation was the same across the board: a binary choice between f/1.5 and f/2.4 aperture sizes. That’s considerably less flexible than modern implementations of variable-rate apertures seen, like that on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra which can be adjusted in 0.01 stop implements, and we would expect Samsung to also move with the times if it does indeed reimplement the feature.
A big “if”
That’s a big “if” at the moment, and we’re certainly closer to the release of the last generation than we are to the Galaxy S26, which isn’t expected until January 2026 at the earliest.
Despite that, we’ve still heard several exciting possibilities for Samsung’s next-generation handsets, including the inclusion of an under-screen camera, a larger battery (though maybe not that much bigger) and a possible 324-megapixel main camera.
Before then, we’re awaiting the arrival of at least three major handsets from Samsung: the Galaxy Z Flip 7, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the ultra-thin Galaxy S25 Edge. We’re expecting these to arrive in the summer, or possibly even sooner in the case of the Edge.
