Samsung set to take on Xiaomi! May offer pricey feature on mid-range Galaxy phones

Optical Image Stabilisation or OIS feature is known to be present on most flagship devices. It provides stability to the videos as well as reduces blur due to hand-shiver in photos. While the feature is mostly found in the flagship segment, it is tipped that Samsung will include OIS on its Galaxy A series devices coming in 2022 and thereby take on Xiaomi. To recall, Samsung introduced OIS on the main cameras of a few of its Galaxy A series devices this year. These included Galaxy A52 as well as Galaxy A72. It looks like things will get better next year.

The latest development comes from a report from Korea. It says that Samsung is likely to add OIS to the main cameras of all of the Galaxy A-series models that it is going to launch in 2022. This will lead to the democratisation of the feature as it is only available on the flagship smartphones and few budget flagships. For years, it has been reserved for expensive smartphones. If Samsung is indeed prepping to pull this off, it could be the differentiating feature for its mid-rangers in its war with Xiaomi, which offers a win on price compared to Samsung's offerings. However, OIS on Samsung Galaxy A series devices could result in Samsung gaining the upper hand over the Xiaomi offerings.

The report also says a camera with OIS is around 15% more expensive than one without it, and the impact of adding OIS into a phone's bill of materials is about 3%. Hence, we can expect Samsung to add OIS to only mid-range Galaxy A-series devices and not the budget A series smartphones. For reference, Samsung offers budget Galaxy A devices in India that are present below the ₹15,000 range. It is unlikely for the company to include OIS on these smartphones. However, we expect the Korean giant to offer OIS on mid-range Galaxy A-series devices.

We don’t know the exact details of the sensors or megapixel numbers on the future Galaxy A series smartphones. Moreover, it is an open question how many people even know what OIS is or why it's important, or how many people would like to have the feature.