Samsung’s recently launched Galaxy S23 series, especially the Galaxy S23 Ultra, seems to have a lot of unexpected tricks up its sleeves. Among the fewer hardware upgrades announced for the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Plus models this year are some interesting software features, including the phone’s ability to lift objects from photos. The feature is very similar to what is possible on an iPhone with iOS 16. From what we can tell, the feature only seems to work on the latest Galaxy S23 devices at the moment.

Several Twitter users have pointed out how the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra seems capable of lifting objects out of a photo, just like we saw on the iOS 16 powered iPhone and iPad models. We tried this on our Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Ultra review units and it worked great.

The feature on Samsung Galaxy S23 phones is available when using the built-in Gallery app. All a user has to do is long-press an object, person or pet in an image, which in a second is extracted from the image as a cutout, displaying a pop-up bubble with Copy , Share and Save as Image options. The user can then choose to save the cutout (which is a .png file) for later use or even share it with another application if needed. The feature also works during video playback, provided the video is paused.

Although the feature is nice and handy to have, Samsung’s reluctance to announce the same may be related to the fact that Apple released the feature first. At the same time, it’s still unclear which company came up with the idea or patented the software feature first.

Much like last year’s Galaxy S22 series, Samsung again reserved the biggest upgrades for its ‘Ultra’ model with the S23 series as well. Samsung’s Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Plus models, as noted in our first impressions, feature similar hardware to the S22 models except for a slightly different cosmetic design and the processor, which has now been replaced by the Custom Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. SoC. Samsung dubbed it “Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy”.

The Galaxy S23 Plus also gets faster wired charging at 45W. According to our first impressions, the Galaxy S23 Ultra gets the new processor, an all-new 200-megapixel main camera with better OIS, and some noticeable improvements to its performance. design as well as a new “Astro Hyperlapse” mode for capturing star trails.