Samsung is pushing out a new update to the Galaxy S10 family of smartphones, that brings a new Night Mode feature to the camera. A feature that was surprisingly missing from the phone’s launch last month, but one that customer’s have also been asking Samsung for.
It’s actually not as big of a deal as it sounds, however. Samsung essentially took out its Bright Night mode, and turned it into a Night mode for users to use. Now it is a dedicated mode, instead of something that would turn on automatically when there is very little light for the camera to use. Bright Night worked decently, but really only turned on when the environment was almost pitch black. So it wasn’t great when you’re outside and there’s still street lights on.
The Bright Night was okay, but hopefully Samsung is still working on some changes to the Night mode to improve it with future updates. After seeing what Google was capable of with the Pixel 3 XL and the single camera lens, it’ll be interesting to see what Samsung is able to do with the three cameras on the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+. Samsung has not yet mentioned what it plans to do with the Night mode on the Galaxy S10, but one has to wonder whether we may see improvements coming down the line with different software updates.
Night mode has become a pretty popular feature lately, when it comes to smartphones. Largely because they make it easier to take shots at night, or in dimly lit situations like restaurants and bars. Smartphones used to be decent when it came to dimly lit environments, but now they are much better and offer some stunning results. Especially Google and Huawei’s new smartphones, which make it look like the lights weren’t even out. Which is pretty impressive to say the least.
The camera on the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10e are already pretty impressive. So Samsung adding a dedicated Night mode is going to make this camera even more versatile. Now it’ll be interesting to see how it works on the different camera lenses, seeing as the telephoto lens doesn’t have as big of an aperture as the wide-angle and ultra-wide angle lenses on the back of the phone. Which means it can’t let in as much light. And that also means that you may see more noise in the pictures, compared to some of the other pictures you might get with the non-telephoto lenses on the back.
So far, this update has only started rolling out in Switzerland. This will likely hit other regions before it starts rolling out in the US. It might be a few weeks for other European countries to get it, as well as other countries in Asia. The US shouldn’t expect it until probably May or later on. Seeing as all updates need to get approved by the carriers in the US, which does definitely slow things down, and that’s the main reason why the US gets these updates much later than other parts of the world.