Samsung’s Expert RAW was launched for enthusiasts who felt that the already extensive default camera app was still limited in its scope. First introduced with the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the app has now been announced to support every Galaxy S22 model as well. But as a new official post from yesterday on the Samsung Community forums says, even more models are set to receive support for the alternative photography app:

  • February 22
    • Galaxy S22
    • Galaxy S22+
    • Galaxy S22 Ultra
  • Early March
    • Galaxy S21 Ultra
  • April
    • Galaxy Z Fold3
  • H1 2022
    • Galaxy S20 Ultra
    • Galaxy Note 20 Ultra
    • Galaxy Z Fold2

For the uninitiated, the Expert RAW app from Samsung is a powerful camera app that includes a number of advanced computational photography features to improve shots, such as multi-frame HDR and RAW capture through the telephoto lens. You can even save clicks in JPEG and DNG RAW formats, which can be quickly edited thanks to the direct integration with Adobe Lightroom.

samsung galaxy s21 vs s21 ultra featured

 

Being rather resource-intensive, it’s no surprise that the Expert RAW app requires high-end performance from the CPU, NPU, and even the GPU to work smoothly. The forum post accordingly says that supported phones must be equipped with at least the Exynos 990 or Snapdragon 865 chips, 8GB of RAM, and a telephoto lens supporting Bayer RAW with 2x (or higher) optical zoom. This effectively limits the camera app to flagship Samsung phones alone, that too the newer models.

This, in turn, means that several devices like the S20 series, Note 20, S21, and S21+ do not make the cut despite sporting flagship SoCs, since they lack a 2x optical zoom lens.

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