Samsung confirms camera problem affecting Galaxy S23 range of smartphones.
Samsung has finally acknowledged a serious camera problem affecting Galaxy 23 and S23 Plus models, paving the way for a much-needed fix.
In a recent Newsroom post, the company has addressed the infamous ‘banana blur’ issue that has been affecting a significant number of Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Plus owners since launch, causing out-of-focus patches in otherwise sharp photos. Samsung claims the issue is an unwelcome side-effect of the camera’s bright, wide aperture lens which can result in a relatively narrow band of sharp focus.
What is the banana blur issue?
The problem was brought to widespread attention a couple of months ago by a Reddit user who noted a curved ‘blurry and smudged area’ frequently appearing in photos before collating similar reports from several Galaxy S23 owners. The issue has been dubbed the ‘banana blur’ problem after the characteristic curved shape of the affected part of the image.
Due to the optical nature of the problem, the issue becomes particularly noticeable when shooting close up and especially so when photographing documents, where text falling within the ‘banana’ can become blurred and hard to read.
Galaxy S23 Ultra models have different camera hardware and aren’t affected to the same extent although, as Samsung’s community post notes, the flagship model can suffer from similar problems when using the smartphone’s high-res mode, as this mode doesn’t support the camera’s ‘focus booster’ option that usually engages automatically when taking close-ups.
Samsung has now promised a software update to address the issue, although no timeframe has been given and it’s unclear at this point how a simple software update might fix an issue intrinsic to the optical design.
Samsung support had reportedly downplayed the problem (translated Samsung forum screenshot), suggesting that users should simply work around the problem by shooting from farther away. However, as the Reddit post reveals, several users are experiencing ‘banana blur’ even in photos shot at a distance — an issue Samsung is yet to address.
I suspect any effective software fix will involve tricks such as merging multiple exposures, which could impact the photography experience in other ways, such as slowing down captures and introducing unwanted motion artifacts. I do think a dedicated, and automatically-engaged, document scanning mode would go a long way to satisfying many users, however.
Unfortunately, given the optical properties of wide-aperture lenses, the real long-term solution is unlikely to come from a simple software update. Future Samsung smartphones might instead have to re-introduce a variable lens aperture, a feature not seen in a Samsung smartphone since the Galaxy S10. This feature was recently used to great effect in Huawei’s Dxomark-topping P60 Pro.
For now, Samsung advises users to take photos from more than 30 cm away and to hold the phone vertically to avoid background blurring. However, this won’t help those Galaxy S23 owners for whom the banana blur is proving problematic in more distant shots as well.
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