Samsung has created a mess with their Galaxy S4 line of phones, cameras, phonecameras and cameraphones. Remember the awesome spoof video from last year about the fake iPhone5? Samsung decided to make this a reality. They’ve chosen to name this piece of garbage the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, similar to my new cell phone, the Samsung Galaxy S4.
My Galaxy S4 claims an industry-leading 13MP camera that has proven to be of the same quality as the dog excrement I find in my backyard. There is clearly no image stabilization, and so all images I’ve taken over the past 2 days pale in comparison to those I take with my 2 year old 8MP LG Spectrum camera. Anyone who dabbles in photography knows image stabilization (also referred to as IS, OIS or vibration reduction) is an important feature on modern cameras and lenses. Unless you’re completely still, shooting a still subject that is close to you, your results will leave much to be desired.
Upon discovering these shortcomings immediately after picking up what is supposed to be the “highest rated” phone camera on the market, I went to the interwebz to find some answers. Upon searching major engines, I am taken to page after page about this Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. I honestly thought it was a joke (see link to spoof video of iPhone5 above!) until I found that I would start reading an article or forum post thinking it was about my phone only to realize that it is an article about this Zoom product. For this reason, I say “shame on you Samsung”. The web is already a congested mess of information to do with all these Galaxy devices and finding specifics on any one of them is now a challenge.
Examples of bad instagrams from the Galaxy S4 – “The Green Issue”
Now we discuss the reason why most of you are here: the Instagram detail enhancer button does not work with any photo, from any source, when run through the Galaxy S4. One press of the detail enhancer button and everything goes green, as seen in above photos. I uninstalled and reinstalled Instagram three times before realizing ANY photo from any camera turns green when I try to use the detail enhancer (also known as the “sun button”).
I find virtually nothing about this online. I ran into several articles about the fabled S4 Galaxy Zoom along the way, but not too much about the green problem. People are talking about tinkering with advanced settings of the Instagram camera itself to try and fix things, but this is different than the green issue. These adjustments to the Instagram camera settings do nothing to fix the detail enhancer problems on the Galaxy S4.
To conclude, I hope many of you will join me in this conversation. I apologize for the SEO style of writing. Samsung and/or Instagram will hopefully release fixes for these things soon, but I am finding nothing to suggest that either is taking ownership of these problems. Instagram is too rooted in its dirty Apple beginnings and Samsung may be too busy making things like the Galaxy S4 Zoom to notice.
Update: My new instagram update hit the other day and so I installed it right away to find my detail enhancer button gone. This was no surprise after reading about this happening to people all over the web. Additionally, I am not given access to the video feature at this time. Boy, Instagram, you sure make it hard for me to stay in your corner. How about an announcement on what is to come with these issues?