The Galaxy S25 Ultra is getting a lot of hate for keeping, essentially, the same camera setup this year, though it did get a pretty massive ultrawide upgrade. And many are wondering why Samsung did not use its own 200-megapixel ISOCELL H9 sensor in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Well, as IceUniverse points out over on X, it’s because of the thickness.
The ISOCELL H9 sensor is rather thick, and would make the Galaxy S25 Ultra much thicker than it already is. Which is also why a lot of companies are going with AloP technology for their sensors. In fact, OPPO and OnePlus used this with their latest flagships, which decreased the size of the camera bump quite drastically.
Why not use AloP on Galaxy S25 Ultra?
Many are wondering why Samsung did not use AloP on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but are on the Galaxy S25 Edge, and the answer is likely price. This is still new technology, so to order several million units, likely 10-20 million, needed for the Ultra model, would be very costly. And likely force Samsung to increase the price of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, after increasing it for the S24 Ultra last year. However, with the Galaxy S25 Edge, Samsung is expected to make far fewer units.
This is also why Samsung and Apple don’t use a lot of cutting-edge technology in their devices – for Samsung, mainly the Galaxy S line. It’s because they need to order tens of millions of units, and for something that is very new and hasn’t scaled yet, that can be very expensive, if it can even be done.
Hopefully, we’ll see Samsung embrace AloP a bit more next year, or even later this year with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, where it could really make a huge difference. This ISOCELL H9 sensor should offer some really incredible photos, given its size, but we might not ever see it in a smartphone. At least not a mainstream one.
