Samsung is Bringing Some Galaxy S21 Features to Older Devices

Samsung is bringing several of the new capabilities that came with the Galaxy S21 Ultra and its One UI OS to its older phones, including the Galaxy S20, Note 20, Z Fold 2, and Z Flip devices. While not all the features in its latest One UI Android skin are coming, many camera features are.

As part of the One UI 3.1 update, several new features are soon going to be available on legacy Samsung devices.

The ability to capture both stills and video simultaneously with the phone’s cameras, which Samsung calls Enhanced Single Take, is one such feature coming to older devices along with Multi Mic Recording, which lets you capture audio both from your phone and from a connected Bluetooth device. These features are aimed more towards creators using their Samsung devices to make more complicated photo and video projects, and while that audience is small at the mid to high-end consumer level, having these capabilities in a smartphone makes it easier and more accessible for new or burgeoning artists to try their hands at more complicated setups.

In the Samsung Gallery app, the Object Eraser tool that can remove visual elements from photos with the help of AI is also coming to older devices. This feature was touted as working similarly to Adobe’s Content-Aware Fill tool, and Samsung boasted in its Galaxy S21 Ultra reveal that it was capable of removing people from backgrounds with a single tap. In practice, it is reported that actual results may vary depending on how prominent the object you are trying to remove is, which is honestly expected; there are limitations to what this kind of thing can do.

AI removes those elements and intelligently fills them.

Finally, Eye Comfort Shield which limits the amount of blue light that your phone outputs, and Private share, which allows you to add an expiration date to files you send to others, are both also coming to legacy devices as part of this update. Both of these features fall into the “nice to have” category, and the file-sharing feature, in particular, should make using Samsung phones for business activities more secure and easier to monitor.

Samsung will start rolling out the One UI 3.1 update starting today in “select markets.”

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