Moving subjects are the kryptonite of Samsung cameras, but has the Galaxy S24 Ultra improved that? We tested it against the Pixel 8 Pro.
There are many great camera phones nowadays and any modern smartphone will often get you a good photo that’s miles ahead of anything we were able to achieve a few years ago. But add a moving subject there — say a jumping child or a fussy pet — and you’re likely to run into some problems.
Samsung phones are famous for missing the mark on more than one occasion in these situations, so I was curious to know how the Galaxy S24 Ultra would perform. Did Samsung fix its notorious shutter lag and motion blur when snapping photos of moving subjects, or did it rest on its laurels, knowing it doesn’t have any real competition for its S Pen-touting flagship?
Since I can’t (and won’t) share pics of kids, I went for the next best test subject: cats. I tried my Galaxy S24 Ultra and my Google Pixel 8 Pro — the most reliable camera I’ve used — on two adorable furry friends. Here are my findings.
Since I was shooting with both phones at the very same instant, the pics aren’t 100% aligned. I was holding each phone with one hand, right next to each other, so there’s a lot of overlap between them, but one captures more of the scene towards the right and the other to the left. I kept alternating the phones between left and right (my dominant hand) to avoid giving one phone an advantage over the other.The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s camera is good when your pet is still
Let’s start with the positives first. As long as the fluffy mischief-makers were staying still, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s camera did very well. I can nitpick the details for hours on end (the colors of the S24 Ultra are more vibrant, but there’s some extra sharpening and the Pixel’s photos look a bit more natural), but most of that is irrelevant in everyday use. Would I be happy with any of these photos? Yes. Case closed.… but not so great when it moves, even a little bit
Everything changed when the two kittens started moving. Just a fraction of a movement and the Galaxy S24 Ultra rendered a blurry pic. The sad part is that I would think, “Oh, I snapped that right on time,” only for me to notice that the image wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.
