Samsung Mobile's head of camera R&D wants your phone to 'personalize' your photos

Samsung announced its first Galaxy S smartphone in the heady days of 2010, and at the time, people were too jazzed by its 4-inch Super AMOLED screen and 1GHz processor to fret much about its cameras. The same could be said of Samsung itself -- the company's original US press release mentioned them a grand total of zero times outside of the spec sheet. Eleven years and millions of Galaxy phones later, cameras have become a crucial part of Samsung's smartphone identity. If you needed any proof, just look at the company's new flagship devices, which go on sale today: the Galaxy S21 and S21 Plus pack a total of four cameras each, while the high-end S21 Ultra sports five and a more pronounced focus on telephoto shooting. And while pundits and reviewers tend to go back and forth on the merits of Samsung's approach to cameras, most of them (myself included) were impressed with what the company pulled off this year.