Phone
Xiaomi 14 Ultra Outshines Galaxy S24 Ultra with Superior 5x Camera Sensor
Samsung recently released its Galaxy S24 series in the last Galaxy Unpacked event. The company hasn’t made any major design changes for the devices, but it has advertised them as the most powerful device in terms of processing performance and camera quality. At launch, it could have been true, but now the Xiomi 14 Ultra is clearly taking the lead in camera performance.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra 5X sensor doesn’t make its magic in front of the Xiomi 14 Ultra
Xiaomi has recently launched its latest device in the form of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. The company used the same 5X sensor with the same specifications, which are already available in the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but in comparison to the camera, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is clearly winning.
According to the photo shared by Tipster, it is seen that the photo taken by the Galay S24 Ultra has faded colors, while on the other side, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s image quality is full of colors with a balanced saturation.
The tipster has also stated that “Xiaomi 14 Ultra and Samsung S24 Ultra have 5x sensors with the same specifications; the former is IMX858, and the latter is IMX854, with specifications of 50 MP 0.7μm. However, the gap in software algorithms is too big. Samsung needs to admit that it has fallen behind and the times have changed.”
According to his statement, Samsung has lacked here in the software department, so there is scope for the company to improve its camera performance with the new software updates. At the same time, we have to accept that the Xiaomi 14 Ultra has justified its partnership with Lieca. With the Leica quad camera setup, Xiaomi has also used the 50MP Sony LYT 900 image sensor, which has boosted the camera performance.
Samsung debuted its Galaxy S24 series earlier this year in January and scheduled its next-generation Galaxy S25 series for early 2025. Rumors now suggest that the Galaxy S26 series, expected to launch in 2026, will feature in-house GPUs.
It is quite early to discuss the Galaxy S26 series since the Galaxy S25 series is still in the budding phase and could take half a year more to take the floor. We now expect Samsung to forego using AMD as an in-house GPU for the Galaxy S26. Samsung is actively working on the next-generation Exynos chip, which has the model number S5E9955 and has an AMD RDNA-based GPU.
A well-known tipster, @rquandt, speculated on this in a post on X, saying, “In 2026, Samsung seems to aim for the release of a next-gen flagship SoC featuring its own GPU.”
The tipster also reported that the giant is gearing up to debut its smartphone processor for the Galaxy S26, which could have its own GPU. Samsung is preparing a powerful and efficient processor for the next-generation Galaxy S25, utilizing its second-generation 3 nm process node for fabrication.
Apart from all this, the Korean brand appears to have created a separate team of more than 1,000 engineers to work with the System LSI team on co-development and optimization.
We already crossed the first quarter of 2024, and the results are fortunate for the tech industry since the global smartphone market grew by six percent.
If the reports are to be believed, the global smartphone market seems to be rebounding, with Android smartphones particularly finding success in the first quarter of the year. Comprehensively, the market grew by six percent year-over-year regardless of Apple shipping only a few iPhones last quarter as compared to Q1 2023, and that appears due to the great success of Samsung Galaxy phones.
Samsung is typically the top smartphone manufacturer in terms of sales, but things appeared to have changed over the months of 2023 since it later lost that title to Apple in Q4 2023. However, as Apple posted a 13% decline in shipments in the first quarter of 2024, Samsung took it as a golden opportunity and was able to recapture the leading position. Samsung devices made up 20% of the total smartphones shipped last quarter, whereas iPhones accounted for only 17%.
In the premium smartphone market, phones above $800 grew the fastest in Q1 2024. This benefited Apple the most, probably because customers are choosing the more expensive iPhone 15 Pro Max models. Furthermore, Apple maintained its position as the smartphone revenue leader, with a 43% share of the market. The success of select brands in regions outside of North America, such as TECNO, Xiaomi, Honor, and Huawei, partially explains the entire growth. Of the top five OEMs, Xiaomi grew the most last quarter, improving shipments by 34%.
It is expected that the trend of strong growth in the premium smartphone market will continue. This is driven by the arrival of new phones with generative AI capabilities. Analysts are predicting that at least 11% of smartphones shipped in 2024 will have generative AI. However, Apple has yet to join the generative AI list.
Finally, Samsung started distributing the waiting One UI 6.1 update to more Galaxy flagship devices that debuted in 2021 and 2022. Now a total of 19 Galaxy devices have gotten their Android 14-based One UI 6.1 update.
Samsung has added new devices to the list of One UI 6.1, which are as follows:
- Galaxy S22 series, Galaxy S21 series, Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip 4, Galaxy Z Fold 3, and Galaxy Flip 3.
The Galaxy S22 series, including the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22+, and Galaxy S22 Ultra, is on the list of devices getting One UI 6.1, but it appears that Samsung may have delayed the rollout due to errors a few users have faced after updating their smartphones.
It is reported that the rollout was paused because some Galaxy S22 units may fail to boot or unlock after the update has been installed. However, users on the Samsung Community forums in Korea, the only market where One UI 6.1 has been released for now, don’t appear to have run into issues themselves.
However, Samsung has yet to officially confirm that it has paused the rollout and even acknowledged any issues, so at the moment, it’s not exactly confirmed that the update has been taken off the air. The Galaxy S22 series owners who didn’t get the One UI 6.1 update yet might want to wait for more details to come out before proceeding with the installation.
If the users are afraid of the issue and want to avoid the risk, they might consider waiting until the Korean giant fixes these problems before installing the update.