Ryan Haines / Android Authority

TL;DR

• Last month a leak identified a few new features coming to Samsung’s Camera Assistant app.
• One UI 8.5 now show evidence backing up the idea of a new 24MP shooting option.
• The app is also preparing new HDR options for working with HDR10+.

Is Samsung going to be able to win shoppers over next year with its Galaxy S26 series? Android users already sound concerned about what they’re expecting from the S26 family, especially as leaks paint the picture of S26 phones that don’t feel like they’re doing enough to differentiate themselves from S25 models. As that hardware continues to come into focus, we’re at least finding reasons to get excited about Samsung’s latest software, especially as that introduces new changes specifically for Galaxy S26 phones.

Back near the start of November, we heard about a leak that outlined a handful of new features for Samsung’s Camera Assistant app that looked like they were getting ready to debut with the S26 series: a 24MP resolution for Camera and Portrait modes, Adaptive Pixel for reducing noise, a focus speed slider, and new HDR options.

Well, we can’t yet confirm that all of those are going to show up when the Galaxy S26 debuts, but we just uncovered some strong evidence in support of two of them. Check out the text strings we’ve spotted in Camera Assistant for One UI 8.5:

Code

<string name="description_24mp_resolution">Turn on High efficiency pictures in Camera settings to save space with 24 MP shots.</string>
<string name="summary_24mp_resolution">Add a 24 MP resolution option to Photo mode.</string>
<string name="summary_hdr10_plus_v2">Use HDR10+ instead of normal HDR in Video and Pro video modes. Requires HDR to be on in Camera settings > Video format options. If HDR10+ is off in the camera preview, videos will be recorded in SDR.</string>

Sure enough, those first two entries directly reference that upcoming 24MP option, both in how it’s enabled and which compression settings it will use.

We also see the option for choosing HDR10+ over regular HDR. And while there’s no new focus speed slider yet, we have seen some progress at least in that general direction, with Samsung preparing to support new focus-control hardware.

Unfortunately, there’s no further progress we’ve spotted on Adaptive Pixel or insight into how it operates, because we still have some questions about just what it does. We’ve heard it should combine multiple lower-res pics into a higher-res one, but the devil’s in the details, and there a few different ways Samsung might be planning to go about this.

With any luck, though, we’ll start piecing that together with the help of a future One UI 8.5 build.

⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.

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