Tired Of Your Galaxy's Camera Shutter Lag? Samsung Has A 'Fix' For You

Samsung's Galaxy phones are among the most popular in the world, often neck-and-neck with the iPhone for global sales volume. Samsung itself is one of the largest corporations in the world, which has led to some weird Samsung products. Given that success and the resources that come with it, it's surprising that Samsung has left some widespread issues with its devices on the back burner. One such problem has to do with the feature-rich Samsung Galaxy camera.

One of the most pervasive Galaxy smartphone problems is camera shutter lag, where the camera doesn't snap a photo until long after you've tapped the shutter button. That's not a problem when snapping a static subject like a landscape, but it's absolutely maddening when it causes you to miss out on a shot of your pet, child, or a sports highlight. It's often worse in low-light environments where the camera must collect extra information to create a night mode shot.

Samsung apparently knows this is a huge problem, and it offers a bandage fix that's almost more insulting than the lack of a real solution. If you want your Galaxy phone — such as a Galaxy Z Fold 7 you may have paid over $2,000 for — to do something as simple as taking pictures when you tell it to, you'll need to download an entirely separate app where you can toggle on a setting to speed up the camera. You might think that, although it's an odd way to remedy the situation, it is at least a remedy. But you'd be wrong, because this so-called fix creates new problems of its own. Here's how it all works, and what to expect.

One of the best Samsung Galaxy features many users miss out on is Good Lock. Available only from the Galaxy Store, it's an app that lets you install a raft of customization tools for your phone. You can tweak everything from how many apps fit on your home screen to how much the volume changes each time you press the volume rocker, and even add shortcuts that activate when you tap the back of the phone. It's an amazing part of the Samsung ecosystem, and a real reason for Android customization enthusiasts to buy Galaxy devices... which only makes the camera shutter option all the more baffling.

After downloading Good Lock, users must install the Camera Assistant module to turn on the Quick Tap Shutter option and turn off Prioritize Focus Over Speed. There are two reasons the Samsung camera is often slow to take pictures. First, it doesn't snap a shot until you take your finger off the shutter button, and second, it uses a computational photography pipeline that (in simple terms) takes multiple photos and compiles them together. Other phones do this, too. Samsung just does it more slowly.

The two aforementioned Camera Assistant tweaks "solve" these frustrations while introducing new ones. Quick Tap Shutter is the more useful option, as it immediately initiates a picture. However, holding down the shutter button triggers video recording, which means that you'll end up with a photo you didn't mean to take in addition to your video. The Prioritize Focus Over Speed setting is a lot more problematic, so let's pivot focus to that.

The real "fix" Samsung has for shutter lag is the Prioritize Focus Over Speed toggle buried in Camera Assistant settings. Here's the weird thing: this option replaced an older one called Faster Shutter, which traded some of the computational photography the Galaxy camera does in exchange for quicker shutter time. Now, the trade-off is more clear. You can pick either focus or speed, but not both.

Changing the setting does nothing to help with capturing motion shots. If you prioritize speed, you'll often get a blurry version of the photo you meant to snap, but choose focus and you'll miss the shot entirely. Moreover, the vast majority of Galaxy owners will never discover this partial fix in the first place. Given that Samsung justified removing Bluetooth from the S Pen stylus by claiming that only 1% of its users ever used the remote control features, the number likely to find out Good Lock exists (let alone that it can partially remedy their camera woes) are surely a tiny minority.

Due to its dominant market position, Samsung can skirt by leaving this unaddressed, but only for so long. The iPhone may be less customizable, but its cameras are known to be among the best in the industry. The same goes for the Pixel family. Meanwhile, Xiaomi and other Chinese manufacturers are leapfrogging Samsung in terms of camera specs. It's clear that great computational photography doesn't necessarily introduce shutter lag, and Samsung may have some work ahead to catch up to the competition.