Samsung Confirms Virtual Aperture Upgrade for Galaxy S25 Ultra

Samsung’s new Galaxy S26 Ultra supports Virtual Aperture across all lenses, giving users more professional-level control over depth of field and background blur. The good news is that the company also plans to bring this feature to last year’s Galaxy S25 Ultra. A Samsung community moderator recently confirmed the rollout, although older Galaxy Ultra models won’t be getting the upgrade.

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Galaxy S25 Ultra confirmed to receive Virtual Aperture upgrade

The Galaxy S25 Ultra already supports Virtual Aperture through the Expert RAW app. However, the feature currently works only with the main 200MP camera. While it supports up to 3x digital zoom, it doesn’t actually function with the dedicated 3x lens. With the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung has rolled out Virtual Aperture for both 3x and 5x lenses, and also integrated the feature directly into the stock camera app for easier access.

Given the usefulness of this feature, many Galaxy S25 Ultra users have been wondering whether their devices will receive the same upgrade. A Samsung community moderator recently addressed these questions, confirming that the 2025 Ultra will indeed gain Virtual Aperture support for the 3x and 5x lenses. However, the moderator also clarified that the feature will not be coming to older Galaxy Ultra models.

Virtual Aperture is essentially Samsung’s software-based approach to replicating DSLR-style aperture priority photography on a smartphone. Unlike dedicated cameras, smartphone lenses typically have a fixed aperture that cannot physically change. Samsung works around this limitation by using depth map data captured by the phone’s camera system to simulate different aperture values.

By processing the scene and identifying foreground and background elements, the camera software can apply varying levels of blur to replicate the effect of wider or narrower apertures. The result allows users to adjust depth-of-field after capture, similar to how professional cameras control background separation. We will let you know when this update rolls out to the Galaxy S25 Ultra.