Terrible Camera Quality On My S25 Ultra

[brotz68]

About 4 days ago, I received my brand new Galaxy S25 Ultra. Everything has been wonderful, except for the camera performance. I have an S24 Ultra that I've been doing camera comparisons with, and in almost every scenario, my S24 Ultra wins by a long shot. It's almost like I can't take a single good picture with my S25 Ultra. 

The areas that look the worst are low-light photos. In low light, the S25 Ultra overprocesses pictures like crazy, which often results in a "smeared" look, with crazy artifacts everywhere. Low light photos consistently look like oil paintings with how aggressive the processing is. There were a few shots I took in very low light in my backyard that had some awful artifacting in the sky. The images have strange patterns, and only cover the very top of the pictures.

Most shots in normal lighting are extremely grainy, dark, and often times blurry and less detailed than my S24 Ultra. This is massively disappointing for a phone worth the price of a good gaming computer. 

I'm genuinely concerned as to whether or not this issue is software related, or it's a hardware problem, specific to my unit. If there's anyone who can help me here, please, feel free to let me know. I'll provide some pictures to give examples. 

[Anderson199214]

Future updates will fix the issues

[brotz68]

Yeah, to be honest, my first thought was software issues. I've never seen anything like this with my S24 Ultra, though, which was definitely worrisome. I guess it could be a fault within Samsung's night mode algorithms, as the images produced in dark environments seem to be very overprocessed using AI. Hopefully the issue is addressed sometime in the near future.

[SpendthriftSal]

Me too! Trading in my s23 ultra. I was very excited for the upgrade. 

Everything was going well until I started doing side by side photo comparisons between the two. The s23 ultra wins on every count. I will say that is 25 ultra is better on the zoom for sure! And also the macro mode is excellent.

Attaching some images. The blurry one is from the s25 ultra. It seems to struggle more in darker rooms. This is just one example. I've had several that went this direction

 

 

[Members_HL1z8Eu]

Exactly similar results when I tried side by side photo on my blanket

 

[KKJJKJ]

It seems trouble from IRCF. I think Samsung changed main camera filter due to reduce cost of camera module. 

[Dunoss]

They better do fix camera or bye samsung. Blurry looking pictures as well, and no turning scene optimiser and adjusting other settings doesn't work. My previous S23+ done better pics.

[Moonraker24]

Mine is exactly the same, with that horrible gridline thing at the top of the night photos. Everything looked grainy and over processed. Plus mine has the same double light streak on the night sky. Needs sorting and fast! 

[brotz68]

I'm glad it's not just me. If you're curious and would like to test something else out, try taking pictures in Expert RAW around any RGB light sources. In Expert RAW, I've noticed some strange "grid lines" appear on either the far left side of the image or directly in the center. This only happens when in Expert RAW, and when around any RGB light sources. My room is full of RGB, which causes Expert RAW to freak out, as well as the normal camera app when scene optimizer is on. I've since resorted to turning off scene optimizer, as it just breaks every image with either harsh lighting or too much light. Really strange anomalies with the S25 Ultra.

[Moonraker24]

Unfortunately I've packed it up to take back until Samsung sort this out. I'm keeping my S24u for now as it's stable and don't want to take rubbish night shots in a few weeks for a trip.