Samsung Galaxy S24 series launched with several unique features, one of which was Instant Slow-Mo. The feature allows users to watch recorded videos in slow motion just by long pressing onto it, without any need to record it in slow motion or edit the effect manually. So far, the feature was exclusive to the newly launched Galaxy S24 series including the vanilla Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra. But now, Samsung is expanding it to older phones as well.
In the official South Korean community forum of Samsung, a moderator announced the development on February 13. After sharing details of the feature, they announced that as many as eight older smartphones will soon support the Instant Slow-Mo feature. These include the Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, Galaxy S23 Ultra, Galaxy Tab S9, Galaxy Tab S9+, Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and the Galaxy Z Fold 5.
As to why just these eight, the post explained that the feature requires a powerful Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) with a minimum processing speed of 16.6 milliseconds for 60fps videos. Incidentally, all the eight listed smartphones are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, which appears to be the minimum threshold for this feature. As such, it is unlikely that the feature will ever make it to Samsung phones running on older or less powerful processors.
Interestingly, Samsung described the Instant Slow-Mo feature as “time zoom”. In the post, the moderator explained just like spatial zoom in still images, where users can stretch the image to see finer details, for the slow-motion feature, the company stretches the time taken between each frame of the video, allowing users to see the finer details in the motion and making it appear to be slowed down. The post did not mention when this feature might reach older handsets. However, some reports suggest it could arrive with the One UI 6.1 update expected next month.
The Instant Slow-Mo feature currently only supports 8-bit videos shot between 720p to 8K resolution and in the MP4 file format. The post also highlighted that the South Korean tech giant intends to improve the feature and might add support for 10-bit videos shot in 480p resolution and MOV file format.