The Galaxy Note 20 Plus' rear cameras have been leaked, and while the next Samsung flagship will inherit one of the S20 Ultra's most impressive cameras, its periscope zoom camera may not be as powerful.
Ice Universe, best known for Twitter-based leaks, revealed some new details on the Galaxy Note 20 on their Weibo page in Chinese. This is the source for these new camera claims and they make for interesting reading.
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If you translate the text of Ice Universe's post, you'll see that we can expect a 108MP main camera, a 13MP telephoto camera, a 12MP ultra-wide camera and a laser focus sensor.
The 108MP sensor is the same one found on the Galaxy S20 Ultra, and it's one of the sharpest cameras you can currently find in a smartphone. It's great news that Samsung's adding this onto its top-tier Note 20, but the S20 Ultra did suffer from focusing problems, making it unnecessarily slow to take in-focus pictures.
That's likely where the laser focus comes in. Replacing the normal time-of-flight auxiliary sensor, this is hopefully the remedy to Samsung's camera woes. While TOF sensors can help make effects like portrait mode work more accurately or make AR apps better, some users may prefer a camera system that focuses reliably, which the laser focus should help with.
The 12MP ultra-wide camera is the same resolution as the ultra-wide camera on the whole Galaxy S20 range, but the 13MP telephoto camera is not found on any of them. The S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus have 64MP 3x hybrid zoom sensors, while the S20 Ultra has a 48MP 4x optical zoom sensor with a maximum of 100x hybrid zoom. It's not on last year's Galaxy S10 or Galaxy Note 10 either, which both used 12MP sensors.
This 13MP telephoto camera has a maximum zoom of 50x according to Ice Universe, placing it between the 30x maximum of the S20 and S20 Plus and the 100x of the S20 Ultra.
This leak now puts into question what the base Galaxy Note 20 will use for cameras. We'd expect something similar to the Note 20 Plus, but it's possible Samsung will swap out the main camera for something smaller, like the 12MP sensor on the S20 and S20 Plus. Perhaps the laser focus will be left off accordingly.
We're currently expecting the Galaxy Note 20 series to get a reveal event in August. It will likely be accompanied by Samsung's next foldable, the Galaxy Fold 2, and could also be joined by the Galaxy Tab S7 tablet.
Other expected Note 20 specs include 4,000 and 4,500 mAh batteries, Snapdragon 865 CPUs (or Exynos 990s outside of the US), 120Hz displays and 5G connectivity. While the design is still a mystery at this point, it will likely look like a Galaxy S20 with sharper corners, with a slot at the bottom for the all-important S Pen stylus that defines the Galaxy Note series.
Check out our Galaxy Note 20 hub page for all of the latest leaks and rumors as we approach the expected August Samsung Unpacked event.
