How good is the laser auto focus?

[DanielLoreti]

I don't see other phones with this lens. Is it a gimmick? Or is it actually really good?

 

[L0n3N1nja]

It's the same focus Samsung has used since the Note 20 Ultra, it works well.

 

[DanielLoreti]

It's the same focus Samsung has used since the Note 20 Ultra, it works well.

Why do they have it and other phones don't though?

 

[L0n3N1nja]

Why do they have it and other phones don't though?

They aren't the only ones to use laser auto focus, LG used to have it on a lot of phones. Years ago most phones either had phase detection or laser and laser worked better. Than Samsung with the S7, and other competing phones adopted dual pixel autofocus which Canon used on their DSLRs and it's essentially a more advanced type of phase detection, most phones currently utilize dual pixel autofocus.

When Samsung launched their first generation 108mp sensor with the S20 Ultra for reasons I don't know, the camera sensor isn't compatible with duel pixel autofocus and only had regular phase detection. This is the reason the auto focus on the S20 Ultra was terrible compared to competing phones and often hunted while moving in and out of focus.

With the Note 20 Ultra they implemented laser autofocus to significantly improve autofocus performance over the S20 Ultra and because they haven't been able to implement dual pixel auto focus into their 108mp sensors they still use laser autofocus on the S22 Ultra.

So basically laser auto focus works really well, but it actually isn't as good as the dual pixel auto focus found on most phones, which is why most phones no longer use it.