A Petition That Calls On Samsung’s Mobile Czar TM Roh To Replace The Camera Division Head Has Already Garnered Over 4,000 Signatures
In a dramatic development that seems poised to create cascading shockwaves across Samsung’s hefty mobile unit, an online petition urging the replacement of key personnel nodes within the South Korean giant’s camera division is now going viral, leading to an embarrassing spectacle that is usually considered an anathema within Samsung’s conservative corporate culture.
To wit, the tipster Universe Ice fired off an evocative X post just moments ago, slamming Samsung for “shamelessly” claiming that its smartphone cameras are “always one step ahead” when the reality has been the polar opposite for quite some time.
Universe Ice then provides a link to his Change.org petition, one that has already garnered over 4,000 signatures, as of the time of publication.
The petition raises eight different issues/demands in relation to how Samsung’s camera division operates:
Stagnation and no substantial upgrades for the past few years – Samsung’s Galaxy S series smartphones continue to rely on somewhat obsolete ISOCELL HP2 and IMX754 camera sensors, leading to stagnation in their imaging capabilities.
Persistent issues with imaging quality, including excessive shadow noise, HDR shadow detail loss, unnatural telephoto processing, poor night photography, subpar portrait quality, and inaccurate white balance. Additional issues include a severe shutter lag in moderately low-light conditions and excessive sharpening in video HDR mode.
Ignoring user feedback that has been demanding the resolution of these longstanding image quality issues.
Blindly copying Apple – Samsung has been trying to imitate Apple’s camera array for its iPhones without creating a differentiating factor or taking into account the needs of its users, heedlessly jumping on to the 5x telephoto and 50MP ultra-wide sensors bandwagon. On the software side, Samsung’s unrefined replication of Apple’s “natural tone” images leads to overall dull and lifeless images.
Skin tone processing bias – Samsung’s cameras bestow unnatural “yellow-black” hues to Asian and Caucasian skin tones, with users going so far as to dub this bias the “Samsung Yellow Face Filter.” This is in marked contrast with many Chinese brands such as Oppo and Vivo, whose smartphones offer differentiated processing for verious skin tones.
Camera algorithm updates are infrequent and slow to address issues, with older models often receiving delayed or missing optimizations. For instance, the Galaxy S23 and S24 smartphones still lack improvements introduced in the S25.
Resisting AI innovation – Samsung inconsistently applies advanced AI algorithms, leading to subpar telephoto performance, especially under poor lighting conditions. It also refuses to adopt promising AI computational photography technologies such as Google’s HDR+ or Huawei’s XMAGE engine.
The camera division’s conservatism and compromises have signaled a loss of innovation, weakening Samsung’s brand influence.
Interestingly, the issues at Samsung’s camera division do not stem from a lack of overall technological prowess. After all, Samsung does manufacture a plethora of advanced camera sensors for various Chinese brands. Instead, the main issue resides with its relatively haphazard and stagnated approach to smartphone photography.