According to rumors, Samsung is ready to push hard on the photographic front of the Galaxy A, a mid-range smartphone line
It's not looking good for Samsung, which according to a recent report by Counterpoint analysts is struggling a lot in the semiconductor market, despite the millions spent to improve the division that produces chips for smartphones with the goal of being the first manufacturer in the world by 2030.
The moment, in some respects, is not the easiest, so you have to hold on to what you have while waiting for better times. And relaunch, because - Samsung has done it in these years, so it knows it well - it's with the quality that you conquer the customers and consequently the market. So, according to an indiscretion, the company wants to try a commendable way, namely to equip all smartphones in the Galaxy A line of OIS, the optical stabilization of images taken by the cameras. The Galaxy A line is the one with which the Seoul-based company is challenging the competition in the mid-market segment, so bringing optical stabilization everywhere would be a nice element of differentiation from the others.
What is the use of optical stabilization
Optical stabilization is a mechanism that compensates for micro movements of the hand by stabilizing the lens and, therefore, the image. It comes in very handy when you're trying to take a picture in low light, when exposure times are long and you need to keep the smartphone as still as possible to avoid getting a blurry picture, or when recording videos in motion, which with optical stabilization are much more "still", and therefore quality.
Naturally the mechanism behind optical stabilization has a cost, so if the OIS is standard on all top of the range the more you look at products that cost less money the more rare it becomes. Samsung's move, if confirmed by the facts, would be very ambitious: the company would invest in quality, moreover in a field - that of photography - to which users look a lot and where instead the competition, on the mid-range, often chooses to save money (and to offer consequently cheaper smartphones) by falling back on electronic stabilization.
In the mid-range it's rare, but Samsung has already made a move
Electronic stabilization, abbreviated to EIS in the data sheets, makes its contribution during video recording and most of the time provides acceptable results, although not comparable to optical stabilization, but nothing can on the other hand on shots in the dark or at night, when the only lifeline to avoid blurred photos is OIS.
We will have to understand what will be the "political" choice of Samsung, that is to say how much and whether to make the user pay more for a product of the Galaxy A line because of the optical stabilization. On this could depend the success of this bet and not only, especially because on the mid-range competition is very close and often the success of a product is decided in 50 euros, or less.
Samsung, however, would be decided, and in part has already been: the recent Galaxy A22 (in photo) already integrates the optical stabilizer, and the move is significant because the smartphone starts, list, from 229 euros in Spain: a range in which finding the OIS is literally impossible.