Samsung's "Space Zoom" feature has come under fire amid complaints that images of the moon are being artificially enhanced to an extreme extent.
Samsung introduced a 100x zoom feature with the Galaxy S20 Ultra in 2020, becoming a mainstay on recent flagship handsets from the company. Since its debut, Samsung has touted its devices' ability to take impressive pictures of the moon. Unlike brands such as Huawei, which simply overlay a PNG of the moon on such images, Samsung says that no overlays or texture effects are applied.
Yet on Friday, a Samsung user on the subreddit r/Android shared a detailed post purporting to "prove" that Samsung's moon shots are "fake." Their methodology involved downloading a high-resolution image of the moon, downsizing it to just 170 by 170 pixels, clipping the highlights, and applying a gaussian blur to heavily obscure the moon's surface details. This low-resolution image was then displayed on a monitor and captured at a distance from a Samsung Galaxy device. The resulting image has considerably more detail than its source.
Samsung devices seemingly achieve this effect by applying machine learning trained on a large number of moon images, making the photography effect purely computational. This has led to accusations that a texture is functionally still being applied to images of the moon and that the feature is a disingenuous representation of the camera hardware's actual capabilities, triggering heated debate online, even bringing into question the iPhone's reliance on computational photography.
Thursday August 28, 2025 4:08 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
An iPhone 17 announcement is a dead cert for September 2025 – Apple has already sent out invites for an "Awe dropping" event on Tuesday, September 9 at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. The timing follows Apple's trend of introducing new iPhone models annually in the fall.
At the event, Apple is expected to unveil its new-generation iPhone 17, an all-new ultra-thin iPhone 17...
Friday August 29, 2025 4:54 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple and Samsung have reportedly issued cease-and-desist notices to Xiaomi in India for an ad campaign that directly compares the rivals' devices to Xiaomi's products. The two companies have threatened the Chinese vendor with legal action, calling the ads "disparaging."
Ads have appeared in local print media and on social media that take pot shots at the competitors' premium offerings. One...
Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 17 series on Tuesday, September 9, and last-minute rumors about the devices continue to surface.
The latest info comes from a leaker known as Majin Bu, who has shared alleged images of Apple's Clear Case for the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, or at least replicas.
Image Credit: @MajinBuOfficial
The images show three alleged changes compared to Apple's iP...
Following the announcement of Apple's upcoming "Awe dropping" event, on this week's episode of The MacRumors Show we talk through all of the new accessories rumored to debut alongside the iPhone 17 lineup.
Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos
We take a closer look at Apple's invite for "Awe dropping;" the design could hint at the iPhone 17's new thermal system with ...
Oh, that explains it. I was having surf and turf at a restaurant and took a photo of my food on this Samsung phone, but when I looked at the photo it turned into a picture of a cow, a potato, a cod, and a bag of panko.
One of the things Samsung claimed about their moon shot feature is that it's using multiple frames to create the final image, but since this experiment used a permanently blurred image it's impossible for the phone to be using multiple frames to reconstruct a sharper image. I'd be interested to hear how Samsung explain that discrepancy.
I think we can expect more and more of computational / AI-enhanced photography.
I just wish we get more control over whether all these features are enabled, or to which extent.
As a photographer, I already find the images from the iPhone quite unnatural looking / HDR-ry. You can mitigate some of that by playing with Photographic Styles, or using a third party app, but I'd prefer something more straightforward.
Biggest design overhaul since iOS 7 with Liquid Glass, plus new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Messages, Phone, Safari, Shortcuts, and more. Developer beta available now ahead of public beta in July.
