Samsung’s recently launched Galaxy S23 series, especially the Galaxy S23 Ultra, seem to have a lot of unannounced tricks up its sleeves. Among the fewer hardware upgrades announced for the Galaxy S23 and the Galaxy S23 Plus models this year, are some interesting software features including the phone’s ability to lift objects from photos. The feature is very similar to what’s possible on an iPhone with iOS 16. From what we can tell, the feature only appears to be working on the latest Galaxy S23 devices for now.
Several Twitter users have pointed out how Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra seems capable of lifting objects from a photo, just like we have seen on iOS 16-powered iPhone and iPad models. We tried this out on our Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Ultra review units and it worked just fine.
The feature on Samsung Galaxy S23 phones is available when using the inbuilt Gallery app. All a user has to do is long-press on an object, person or pet in an image, which in a second gets plucked out of the image as a cutout, showing a pop-up bubble with Copy, Share, and Save as image options. The user can then choose to save the cutout (which is a .png file) for later use or even share to another app if needed. The feature also works during video playback, provided the video is paused.
While the feature is an interesting and handy one to have, Samsung’s hesitation to announce the same may be related to Apple releasing the feature first. At the same time, it remains unclear as to which company came up with the idea or patented the software feature first.
Just like last year’s Galaxy S22 series, Samsung has once again reserved the bigger upgrades for its ‘Ultra’ model with the S23 series as well. Samsung’s Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Plus models, as pointed out in our first impressions, feature hardware that is similar to S22 models save for a slightly different cosmetic design and the processor, which has now been bumped up to the customised Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. Samsung has branded it as the ‘Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy’.
The Galaxy S23 Plus also gets faster wired charging at 45W. The Galaxy S23 Ultra as per our first impressions gets the new processor, a brand-new 200-megapixel primary camera with better OIS and some noticeable upgrades to its design along with some new ‘Astro Hyperlapse’ mode for capturing star trails.