The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra may not have as big of a camera upgrade as its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. At least as far as hardware is concerned.

These are the specs for the Galaxy S21 Ultra's four rear cameras, according to Ice Universe, a reliable technical tipster who tweeted out the specs. On paper, these camera specs are nearly identical to the Galaxy S21 Ultra's rear cameras.

Ice Universe claims that the main sensor will be 108MP with an f/1.8 aperture, although the camera's sensor will be upgraded.

The ultra-wide-angle camera is said to be 12MP, the same as before. The 10MP telephoto camera is also rumored to be nearly identical to the one on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, but with an improved sensor and slightly larger pixel size, which should improve low-light photography.

The Galaxy S21 Ultra is one of our picks for the best phone camera, but we've come to expect Samsung to improve the camera on every new flagship phone, at least on the Ultra model. These specs again suggest no major upgrades, including the rumored 200MP main camera. (That rumor has been quashed before.)

Given that both the iPhone 13 Pro Max and the Google Pixel 6 Pro have shown off some stellar smartphone photo chops in recent weeks, it is worth raising an eyebrow. So Samsung will need to pull out something special to compete early next year, when the Galaxy S22 lineup is expected to debut.

In the past few generations of Galaxy phones, Samsung has actually shown that it can improve image signal processing and computational photography to deliver impressive photos. However, both Apple and Google have raised the bar with their recent flagships, and Google has added a number of attractive features to the Pixel 6.

These new Pixel 6 camera features include a new motion mode that can blur backgrounds and a long exposure mode for creating artistic effects around moving objects in an image. In addition, there is a great new Pixel 6 Magic Eraser tool that can erase photo bombs and other unwanted objects from photos.

While much of photography is subjective, and some may prefer the high contrast photos of Pixel devices versus the heavy saturation of Galaxy devices, Samsung phones have gotten better over the generations in detail capture, low light photography, and overall computational photography The Galaxy S is a great example of this. So there is no reason to expect Samsung not to continue this trend with the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

In many ways, we are more interested in seeing Samsung do more in terms of video than still photography. The Samsung Galaxy S21 shoots fairly solid video at high resolutions and frame rates, but it definitely cannot keep up with the iPhone 13 series when it comes to HDR performance and the new cinematic mode. The Galaxy S21 can shoot portrait mode video, but not very convincingly.

Cameras aside, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is going to be an impressive flagship, as it could be the spiritual successor to the Galaxy Note. Its chipset is said to be a tie between Samsung's Exynos silicon and AMD's RDNA 2 graphics. This is the same GPU architecture found in the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and could provide very impressive gaming on the go.

So far, much of this information remains unconfirmed rumors. However, the Galaxy S22 is expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2022, so it may not be too long before we find out what Samsung does next with its flagship device.