Samsung faking Moon shots

Samsung's "Space Zoom" feature has faced criticism due to claims that it enhances images of the moon artificially. The feature was introduced with the Galaxy S20 Ultra in 2020 and has been promoted for its ability to capture impressive pictures of the moon.

Unlike other brands that use overlays or texture effects, Samsung claims that it does not apply any such effects. However, a Samsung user on the r/Android subreddit recently posted a detailed explanation that purported to prove that Samsung's moon shots are "fake."

Their method involved downsizing a high-resolution image of the moon to just 170 by 170 pixels, clipping the highlights, and heavily obscuring the surface details with a gaussian blur. This low-resolution image was then captured with a Samsung Galaxy device, resulting in an image with considerably more detail than the source.

Samsung apparently achieves this effect by using machine learning trained on a large number of moon images, making the photography effect purely computational. This has led to accusations that the feature is a disingenuous representation of the camera hardware's actual capabilities, and has sparked heated debate online, even calling into question the iPhone's reliance on computational photography.