Following Apple, Samsung could bring back a major camera feature with its Galaxy S27 series

There have been reports of Apple bringing variable aperture to its iPhone 18 lineup. Of course, that means Samsung will also try to bring the feature to its flagship phones, or at least that’s what it seems like from a new report coming out of Korea. Whether or not the feature actually makes it to either of the company’s phones, remains to be seen.

The information comes courtesy of ET News (machine translated from Korean) citing industry sources who claim that Samsung has asked multiple camera module manufacturers to develop variable aperture tech for smartphones. Two of the manufacturers, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and MCNEX, have already started working towards fulfilling the request. The report further adds that Samsung is “strongly committed” to using variable aperture in its Galaxy phones. Since it’s too late to bring the technology to the Galaxy S26 series that’s just around the corner, the Galaxy S27 series could feature the camera upgrade. That being said, there were reports early last year about Samsung bringing back variable aperture to its Galaxy S26 series but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

As for Apple’s integration, the iPhone 18 series that is expected to launch in September this year is said to bring variable aperture. It is unclear if the feature will be exclusive to the Pro models. Variable aperture allows the camera lens to adjust the amount of light to the sensor, leading to potentially better photos in both day and night time. While this will be the first time for Apple to implement this feature into its phones, Samsung has had previous experience with the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S10 models that launched back in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Depending on how slim and compact the manufacturers can make variable aperture modules, Samsung may or may not use them for its Galaxy S27 lineup. For now, this is just conjecture and neither of the companies have given any indication on the feature being worked on for the next generation of phones.