Galaxy S27 Ultra cameras could get a radical overhaul – and I’m worried

It wasn’t meant to be like this, Samsung!

For years, we’ve been asking for major camera upgrades on the Galaxy S Ultra flagship. Each time, Samsung has stuck to its guns, delivering meagre tweaks rather than any wholesale changes.

However, that all looks set to change on the upcoming Galaxy S27 Ultra, with an established leaker suggesting some big shifts.

The problem? Rather than helping the S27 Ultra compete with the very best camera phones, I believe it could end up making things worse for Samsung’s next top-of-the-line flagship. Let me explain.

A zoom dead zone – right where you need it

According to Ice Universe, arguably the most famous Samsung leaker on the planed, the Galaxy S27 Ultra will ditch its 3x telephoto lens.

Shockingly, it’s apparently not being replaced with anything, meaning you’re losing one of the S26 Ultra’s most useful sensors.

The effect is entirely predictable.

The camera will be able to take great photos at 1x as usual (assuming it sticks with the 200Mp main sensor). At 5x, the dedicated telephoto kicks in, enabling crisp optical zoom and decent digital quality beyond that.

But there’ll also be a massive dead zone from 1.1x to 4.9x – in other words, exactly where most people rely on zoom photography. It creates an incredibly unbalanced zoom experience, where you have a low-quality image crop sandwiched by two crisp, high-quality images.

This would be fine on a budget or mid-range phone. But this is the Galaxy S27 Ultra – the follow-up to the best phone you can buy which surely has its sights set on the best camera phone title.

Unless it performs absolute heroics with likely identical hardware elsewhere, the S27 Ultra would have a hard time getting even close to the current top three.

Ignoring the iPhone 18 Pro

The blow of losing a 3x telephoto lens would be softened if Samsung had delivered major upgrades to the main lens, but there are no signs of that happening.

Specifically, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max now have a variable-aperture main lens, allowing you to seamlessly move between f/1.48 and f/4.0 focal lengths.

Apple isn’t the first to include this by any means, but it’s an admission that this advanced camera tech is ready for the mainstream. And with the huge low-light improvements, professional-grade portrait background blur and even smoother video, the benefits are clear.

With Samsung beating Apple to the punch in the wide foldables category, the least it could do is copy its big rival on the next-gen flagship. As we all know, the higher 200 megapixels of the S26 Ultra offers very little real world benefit.

With seemingly no upgrades whatsoever, let alone a variable aperture, Samsung looks set to stick to the same core hardware for a fifth year in a row. With rivals innovating all over the place, the S27 Ultra could be left behind.

You can’t out-Pixel the Pixel

For over a year, the Pixel 10 Pro XL was Tech Advisor’s best point-and-shoot camera phone.

It’s since been replaced by the 11 Pro XL, but the point still stands: if you want a camera phone where you can snap with the default settings and pretty much guarantee a great photo, get a Pixel Pro phone.

A big part of that its the Pixel’s colour profile, which leans on warmer, vibrant images that really pop.

Wisely, Samsung has chosen not to compete with this, scaling back early Galaxy phones‘ oversaturation tendencies in favour of a more neutral, true-to-life image.

However, if Ice Universe is to be believed, the Galaxy S27 Ultra will shift towards a colour temperature that’s “clearly warmer, with more yellow, orange and red tones”. It’s also supposedly increasing saturation again, while also prioritising deep blacks.

On paper, this sounds like a smart move, eliminating the need for many people to edit photos before posting to social media. But it also removes Samsung’s signature photography style, moving closer to a rival that already has point-and-shoot nailed.

It feels like Samsung is introducing big changes to the style of images to compensate for a lack of hardware upgrades. The photos you take might look different, but they’ll be lacking in any of the technical improvements you might hope for.

It’s important to acknowledge the benefits of this shift, with more accurate shadows, better control of highlights and a greater sense of depth. But do they justify such a radical shift in the look and feel of photos? I don’t think so.

Ultimately, I can’t see the S27 Ultra wrestling the point-and-shoot crown from the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL, which makes this a very risky move.

The Galaxy S27 Ultra undoubtedly needed some significant camera changes. But by downgrading the hardware and introducing sweeping visual changes, Samsung is basically signalling that looks are more important than true image quality.

If these leaks turn out to be true, it would make the phone a tough sell in the current climate.