Better late than never: Samsung officially reveals its next flagship phone will double as a webcam
(Image credit: Samsung)
As we near the full reveal of the Galaxy S24 on January 17th, Samsung has already announced during a CES keynote that its next "flagship phone" (presumably the S24, then) will be able to double as a webcam. The feature will allow you to switch between the front-facing and rear-facing cameras, as well as apply Samsung's AI camera features like Background Blur and Auto Framing.
(Image credit: Samsung)
Keen Samsung fans may recall that this feature isn't entirely new. Samsung had already offered it in a beta release of its One UI operating system, but since removed it from subsequent releases. Now it seems guaranteed that the upcoming S24, S24 Plus and S24 Ultra will get webcam functionality, but whether this will be kept as an S24-exclusive, or could be rolled out to older Galaxy phones, remains to be seen. We'd expect Samsung to keep this as an S24-only feature to help maintain the phone's flagship status, at least for now.
(Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
This announcement could be seen as somewhat overdue, given how other phones - like the Google Pixel 8 - can already function as webcams, and third-party apps can pull the same trick with existing Samsung phones. And it makes perfect sense to use a phone as a webcam, as not only can the quality of a modern phone's front-facing camera be superior to the hardware in many standalone webcams, once you combine this with a phone's immense video processing power, the end results can humble even some of the best webcams on the market.
Ben is the Imaging Labs manager, responsible for all the testing on Digital Camera World and across the entire photography portfolio at Future. Whether he's in the lab testing the sharpness of new lenses, the resolution of the latest image sensors, the zoom range of monster bridge cameras or even the latest camera phones, Ben is our go-to guy for technical insight. He's also the team's man-at-arms when it comes to camera bags, filters, memory cards, and all manner of camera accessories – his lab is a bit like the Batcave of photography! With years of experience trialling and testing kit, he's a human encyclopedia of benchmarks when it comes to recommending the best buys.
