The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Moongate saga began when Reddit user ibreakphotos posted about their own experiments with moon photography. Their claim is that when someone shoots the moon using the phone's super-extended hybrid zoom mode, Samsung effectively puts a lunar texture on the images. This is something Samsung denies. We reached out to the company to get the official line: "Samsung is committed to delivering best-in-class photo experiences in any condition. When a user takes a photo of the moon, the AI-based scene optimization technology recognizes the moon as the main object and takes multiple shots for multi-frame composition, after which AI enhances the details of the image quality and colours. It does not apply any image overlaying to the photo. Users can deactivate the AI-based Scene Optimizer, which will disable automatic detail enhancements to any photos taken."

And unlike, for example, the Eiffel Tower, its appearance is not going to change drastically based on lighting. Moon shooting typically only happens at night, and Samsung's processing falls apart if the moon is partially obscured by clouds. One of the clearest ways Samsung's processing fiddles with the moon is in manipulating mid-tone contrast, making its topography more pronounced. Samsung does this because the Galaxy S21, S22, and S23 Ultra phones' 100x zoom images suck. They involve cropping massively into a small 10-MP sensor.