New Galaxy S11+ camera details reveal periscope zoom, 12MP output size, more

Ben Schoon | Dec 16 2019 - 9:29 am PT

We’re only a few months away from the debut of Samsung’s next big smartphone and this week, some interesting new details are coming out regarding the camera setup on the top-tier Galaxy S11+.

Ice Universe, a fairly reliable source of Samsung leaks, released these new details on Twitter just ahead of the new week. Firstly, he comments on the arrangement of Samsung’s camera sensors on the Galaxy S11+.

A previous leak of this device showed a camera array that had a strange, almost domino-looking arrangement of the 5 sensors. It wasn’t received very positively by the community, but it’s possible it wasn’t the actual layout. In what appears to be either a good mockup or a leaked teaser image, the S11+ is shown with its three primary sensors neatly organized along the left side of the housing.

The tweet goes on to explain that these sensors include the primary 108MP sensor, an ultra-wide-angle lens, and a periscope zoom lens as well. Periscope lenses aren’t new to Android with some models adopting the technology in 2019. It’s been previously reported that the lens will offer 5x optical zoom. Unfortunately, there’s no indication of what’s housed on the right side of the camera array. The tweet mentions flash and ToF as “expected.”

This is the real Galaxy S11+ camera. On the left is the ultra-wide-angle, main camera, and periscope zoom lens. I don't know the exact distribution on the right. It is expected to include flash and ToF. pic.twitter.com/98exPMSqgf

— ICE UNIVERSE (@UniverseIce) December 16, 2019

In another tweet, Ice Universe confirms some details about the Galaxy S11+’s main camera. Apparently, the 108MP sensor will use a 9-to-1 Bayer arrangement which condenses photos down to 12MP in size. That might not sound great, but other phones using similar systems show that this method can produce very sharp images with lots of detail when zoomed in. Of course, Samsung will probably offer an option to still save photos in their full 108MP size.