Samsung’s Galaxy S23 lineuppacks an impressive array of cameras. While the Ultra has the most versatile setup, the regular and the Plus model also pack competent cameras. Over the last few months, though, owners of Samsung’s latest non-Ultra flagship phones havecomplained about blurry and smudged spots in photos. Popularly referred to as bananagate, the blurring makes photos of documents and texts unreadable. Despite all the complaints, Samsung never acknowledged the issue. Now, in a community post, the company has indirectly hinted at a possible fix coming for this problem.
In a post on itsPolish community, the Korean giant says thatGalaxy S23and S23+ users must have noticed blurring around subjects while taking close-up shots. Samsung attributes this to the “bright aperture” on these phones that have a small focusing area, leading to the background appearing blurry.
Sample image showing the Galaxy S23’s bananagate blurring.
The company’s explanation of the problem is different from the bananagate issue. In the latter, the smudging and blurriness are visible even when taking landscape shots. As for the blur Samsung described, it is a byproduct of the big sensors on the Galaxy S23 series.
Nonetheless, Samsung says it will address the blur in a future update. Until then, it recommends moving the phone further away from the subject while taking a picture. Ideally, you should have more than a hand’s width gap. You must also hold the phone vertically as the blur may appear more pronounced in landscape orientation.
Since theGalaxy S23 Ultraswitches to the ultra-wide camera and uses the Focus enhancer mode when taking close-up or macro shots, this blurring issue does not affect it. However, you can spot the same problem when snapping photos from the phone in 50MP or 200MP mode.
Samsung reportedly plans to roll out a major camera update for the Galaxy S23 in June 2023. It should address many of the camera issues of the phones andintroduce a new 2x zoom option in Portrait mode. It’s possible the same update will also address the blurring problem on the non-Ultra phones.
