Based on current rumors, what Samsung has already announced, and the information I've dug up myself, Samsung is really going to make big strides in smartphone photography and videography next year. Along with 8K@30fps and 108MP camera support, Samsung is working on many new photo and video modes for its upcoming smartphones. These modes are very impressive and frankly, I'm excited to see what Samsung is working on. These new modes include Director's View, Night Hyperlapse, Single Take Photo, Vertical Panorama, and custom filters.
An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.
Director's View
The first feature, and to me the most exciting, is Director's View. Director's view will let you lock onto a subject in view and also "select who's in the close up." Along with that, it lets you "Tap the thumbnails on the left to switch between camera lenses. Tap the ones on the right to jump o a close-up on a subject." This sounds like Samsung will allow you to record from multiple camera lenses at the same time.
This is something the iOS app Filmic Pro does on the iPhone 11. You are able to record 1080p at 30fps on the iPhone 11 out of two of the cameras at the same time. Director's View sounds like Samsung will natively be allowing you to do something similar.
Night Hyperlapse
The next feature is Night Hyperlapse. While we can't find more information about Night Hyperlapse besides a name and description, it's pretty simple to interpret what this is for. It seems like it will be the existing hyperlapse mode but with night mode. The description mentions that you'll need to keep your phone still, which makes this sound more like a night time-lapse mode rather than a night hyperlapse.
Single Take Photo
Next is Single Take Photo, which sounds like it'll be a very cool feature. This mode will let you "Start shooting to capture the scene in a series of pictures and short videos." You will pan your phone around for 15 seconds, slowly, and it will capture a bunch of pictures and videos of the scene. As you go through, it will tell you to slow down when needed or "Oh, you’re doing great!" The mode will also show popups saying things like "Artist at work..." and "This is some of my best work..." After the phone processes all the photos and videos, you will be able to see a collection of what it just took.
Vertical Panoramas
Next is vertical panoramas. This basically just takes a panorama, which is normally horizontal, but vertically. This is actually already possible on Samsung phones if you ignore the warnings and lines Samsung gives you and just pan the camera up and down. It's nice to see Samsung is embracing this feature and making it part of the main panorama mode, though.
Custom Filters
Lastly, custom filters. Samsung is adding the ability to take a picture you like and turn it into a filter. While we aren't totally sure what this means, it could be taking certain aspects of the photo like saturation, exposure, and brightness and turning it into a filter. Samsung's camera actually supports filters right now under the beauty mode settings, but this could extend the functionality into more custom changes.
Samsung is working on lots of new features for its upcoming smartphones that extend existing functionality and make photography easier for everyone. They are also providing features for professionals who want more from their phones. Samsung is also usually good at backporting features to its older Galaxy devices, so we hope these don't end up as Galaxy S11 exclusives.
Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.