Low light photography has been one of the best smartphone trends of 2018 thanks to computational photography techniques. The Huawei P20 was the first to the scene with a handheld long-exposure night mode that really impressed. But it wasn’t until Google released Night Sight for the Google Camera app on the Pixel smartphones that we really saw what this technology is capable of. Both OnePlus and Xiaomi have their own takes on this type of feature, as well. One company that has notably been missing from these conversations has been Samsung. However, we have discovered evidence in the latest One UI (Android Pie) beta that the company is working on their own Night Sight-like feature, which may be called “Bright Night.” This feature could debut on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 which is expected to be announced at the end of February 2019.
Google’s Night Sight feature may be the most well-known, but similar features are available on other devices. OnePlus calls theirs “Nightscape,” Xiaomi calls it “Night Scene,” Honor has “Super Bright Mode,” and Huawei simply calls it “Night Mode.” Most of these camera modes take a similar approach: They take multiple pictures and combine them into one picture that is much brighter, shows more detail than a typical low-light photo, isn’t overexposed, and doesn’t rely on the LED flash. That’s exactly how Samsung describes their new “Bright Night” feature.
The mode will work in a similar way to Night Sight, taking multiple shots and using software to combine them together. The method has already produced excellent results for the Pixel 3. Depending on how well it’s implemented, Bright Night could help Samsung close this software quality gap with the competition.
The Galaxy S10 is already shaping up to be a much more fundamental revision for Samsung after the iterative changes we saw with the S9. Various reports about the phone have claimed that it will feature an in-display fingerprint sensor, up to six cameras, and a hole-punch Infinity O display, and now it seems its camera is also in line for an upgrade.