Samsung's latest Galaxy smartphones have officially been announced and, miraculously, there was a prominent AV feature that received plenty of attention during the Unpacked presentation. I say miraculously as picture and sound features are often relegated to footnotes of press releases or, in many cases, not mentioned at all.
So, when Samsung announced that its mobile and television divisions had collaborated on a new picture quality-enhancing feature for the S25 series, my interest was immediately piqued. The feature in question is ProScaler, which promises to enhance details of lower-resolution content by up to 40 per cent to better suit the expansive and crisp 6.9-inch Quad HD display of the S25 Ultra.
Why is this so important though? Simply put, the mobile versions of streaming services tend not to stream in resolutions higher than 1080p, with much of the content we find on the likes of Netflix, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video streaming in either 720p or 1080p. Furthermore, 1440p (Quad HD) isn't a traditionally supported resolution on any of the current streaming services, so finding content that can fully take advantage of this high-spec display is easier said than done.
This means that the ProScaler feature becomes an integral part of closing the gap between the content you're watching, and the capabilities of the phone's display; because who wants blocky, low-resolution visuals on their £1200 smartphone?
This technology is, unsurprisingly, backed by Samsung's robust AI platform which is featured in everything from its smartphones to its refrigerators and, most notably, its TVs. In fact, this ProScaler function appears to be directly inspired by and presumably working in a very similar way to Samsung's AI Upscaling Pro engine. This feature was a major factor in the QN900D 8K TV receiving five stars, and it's confirmed to be coming to the company's 2025 4K OLED and NeoQLED TVs.
Much like how there is very little 8K content to be found in the wild, Quad HD content is very rare; in fact, it's almost exclusive to YouTube. So, Samsung's workaround to enhance content to match its screens makes complete sense to me, as waiting for creators to adopt these formats has been a fruitless endeavour thus far.
Optimistically speaking, I'd like to see Samsung bring more of its TV features to its smartphones, including its Object Tracking Sound Pro feature and AI Motion Enhancer Pro; obviously scaled down for mobile use, of course. The big, bold and bright screen of the S25 Ultra lends itself so well to being a travelling companion to take movies on the go, so bring on the AV features I say!
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