Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra may have a major zoom upgrade and an in-screen camera

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Image credit: Aakash Jhaveri)

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra sounds like it could be a big upgrade on the already-impressive Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra based on early leaks, with the camera in particular possibly getting some significant improvements.

According to Ice Universe (a leaker with a solid track record) in a post on Chinese social network Weibo, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra could offer continuous optical zoom with its camera. Currently, most telephoto and periscope cameras in phones only offer one optical zoom level.

In fact, that’s why the Galaxy S21 Ultra has two zoom lenses – one to provide 3x optical zoom, and one to provide 10x. If you choose, say, 5x zoom though the phonewill switch to a hybrid zoom (combining the 3x zoom lens with digital zoom), with less impressive results than you’d see from an optical zoom.

So by offering continuous optical zoom, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra would be able to deliver optical zoom at all intervals up to its maximum optical zoom level.

Going under

That’s not the only rumored camera upgrade though, as the same source says that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra will have an under-display selfie camera. We’re expecting Samsung to start using these sooner or later, and current rumors suggest the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 might be the first Samsung phone to have such a snapper, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the S22 Ultra did too.

That would mean there’s no need for a punch-hole or notch to interrupt the screen. An early attempt at this camera placement on the ZTE Axon 20 5G wasn’t entirely successful, as the camera was still slightly visible under the display, and didn’t take brilliant quality photos, so it remains to be seen if Samsung can do better.

Finally, the source claims that the Galaxy S22 Ultra will be powered by a Samsung Exynos chipset with an AMD GPU.

It’s previously been rumored that Samsung has partnered with AMD for its 2022 flagship Exynos 2200 chipset, so this isn’t really anything new, but based on previous rumors this could be a huge upgrade on the Exynos 2100 found in the Samsung Galaxy S21 range.

Of course, buyers in the US will probably get a Snapdragon chipset instead, as that tends to be the case with the Galaxy S range.

It’s early days for Samsung Galaxy S22 rumors, so we’d take all of this with a pinch of salt, but if these rumors do pan out then the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra could be a very exciting handset.

Via PhoneArena

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.