[Rolling now] Galaxy S10 Bright Night: Samsung support confirms Night Sight like features coming soon

NOTICE: We’ve created an archive of all major developments related to the Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup. We are continuously updating that page with latest S10e/S10/S10+ news so that you don’t need to search for information related to the device on daily basis. Head here to access that page.

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Computational photography techniques are the next big thing in the smartphone world. With the continuous improvement of SoCs, chip makers are able to squeeze separate co-processors dedicated for AI driven image processing.

Qualcomm’s Hexagon DSP (digital signal processor) or Google’s Pixel Visual Core are some of the prime examples of such hardware components. They effectively boost the actual capability of the camera sensors by providing intelligent post-processing effects on the raw images.

The low light photography capabilities of Google Pixel lineup have got universal acclaim, thanks to the Pixel Visual Core and it’s machine learning algorithms.

In fact, the Google Camera app itself contains multiple algorithms to capture better low light pictures. Android community ported the app to non-Pixel phones and the improvements were easily noticeable.

Google calls it ‘Night Sight‘, which combines different techniques to overcome the traditionally overexposing effects in photos taken under bright flashlight.

Night Sight constantly adapts to you and the environment, whether you’re holding Pixel or propping it on a steady surface. Before you press the shutter button, Night Sight measures your natural hand shake, as well as how much motion is in the scene.

If Pixel is stable and the scene is still, Night Sight will spend more time capturing light to minimize noise; if Pixel is moving or there’s significant scene motion, Night Sight will use shorter exposures, capturing less light to minimize motion blur.

A number of phone makers jumped into the bandwagon shortly after Google released the feature in public. Honor calls it ‘Super Bright Mode’, where as OnePlus markets their low light photography mode as ‘Nightscape’. Xiaomi, on the other hand, opts for the ‘Night Scene’ phrase.

The internal workflows of all these camera night mode features are pretty much same: the camera sensor takes multiple consecutive snaps and intelligently combine them into one picture that is much brighter but not overexposed.

Samsung, however, decided to join the party later. DxOMark praised the camera performance of 2019’s Galaxy S10+ and gave it a jaw dropping all time highest score of 109, but the Korean OEM did not bundle a dedicated low light photography mode with the phone.

Nevertheless, XDA Developers people uncovered the mystery. By examining the stock camera apk of Galaxy Note 9’s Pie update aka One UI, they found some interesting text snippets that talk about a feature similar to what other night mode features do.

As you can see, Samsung internally called it ‘Bright Night’. But after the release of Galaxy S10, hardcore followers were heartbroken to notice that the option was nothing compared to Google’s Night Sight.

Wait! There are some new twists in the story.

Samsung’s Greater China President, Quan Guixian, attended at a fan meeting in Guangzhou a few days ago. As reported by ITHome, he confirmed that Samsung would bring “handheld long exposure mode” for every Galaxy S10 variant via future software update.

A Polish user contacted Samsung support after the the above news was published. The support person seconded the claim, and confirmed that a separate camera night mode would come via OTA update.

A quick English translation of the reply section looks like as follows:

Good morning, thank you for contact. We’re working on separating the night mode for manual operation.

FYI, you can use ported Google Camera (also known as GCam port) on Snapdragon powered Galaxy S10 models (mainly the USA model, not the global one) to take superior pictures by utilizing Google’s Night Scene.

What are your experiences with night mode photography with Galaxy S10? Let us know by commenting below.

Digging through the stock Samsung camera app reveals tons of new camera modes coming for Galaxy S10, including a dedicated Night Sight like low light mode.

Head over to this article to know more.

According to leakster Ice Universe, the long exposure mode for better low light photography (aka night mode) is coming to Galaxy S10 lineup by April or May.

Global Exynos powered Samsung Galaxy S10 phones are now getting a new OTA update with April security patch and camera night mode support.

For camera samples and further details, see here.

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