Samsung My FanCam Tracks a Person Entirely On-Device

Samsung’s My FanCam turns a finished group video into a clip that follows one person, and that work stays on the phone. The Galaxy Z Fold8, Z Fold8 Ultra, Z Flip8, and Galaxy S26 FE all keep the tool in the Gallery app, beside Audio Eraser.

On September 1, Hwangpil Park of Samsung Research’s Visual Technology Team, plus Sunghwan Kim and Sherry Hong of the MX Multimedia Development Group, walked through the part the launch clips skip. Object tracking already lives in the camera. This version has to know who you tapped after someone walks in front of them, and it has to do that without a server.

A One-Tap Cut After the Concert Ends

My FanCam is an editor, not a recording mode. You shoot a wide clip as you would anyway, open it in Gallery, tap the Galaxy AI control, and pick My FanCam. The phone finds people in the file, puts touch targets on them, and waits for you to choose one. You set a frame, tap Follow, then Save Copy. The original stays put.

Samsung’s own first look at the Z Fold8, published on July 22, 2026, says the tool reframes the clip around one subject after you pick that person in Gallery. Auto Framing and Auto Track still try to hold a subject while you record. FanCam starts when the file is already saved, which is when you actually know who the clip is about.

Hands-on tests put a horizontal or vertical export on the table, with ratios that include 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 3:4, and 4:5. Vertical 9:16 is the default if you are cutting for a phone feed. You can cut more than one version from the same file by changing the person or the ratio, because the first pass has already tagged the people in the shot.

Samsung’s own walkthrough is short, and it matches that Gallery path.

An AI Model That Knows Who You Tapped

Older trackers follow a moving blob. They lose the plot when a dancer, a defender, or a parent crosses the frame, because the blob they locked onto is no longer the same shape. Park said My FanCam is built on a model that treats a person as a person.

The key to My FanCam’s ability to follow a selected person even in complex scenes is an AI model that precisely recognizes individuals. The model identifies and remembers each person’s location and visual characteristics, allowing it to recognize the same person throughout the video and continue tracking them.

Hwangpil Park, Visual Technology Team, Samsung Research

That is why you can tap a face at any point in the timeline. Park flagged school plays and sports days, where the child you want may walk on late or spend a minute hidden in a pack. You scrub to a frame where the face, upper body, or full body is clear, tap there, and the model walks that identity back through the rest of the file.

Kim’s other design choice sits next to that. Re-reading the clip every time you switch from one person to another would make you wait twice. The first analysis tags several people at once, so later taps are instant. Hong said weekly meetings became daily ones, and testers fed the model old college dance-club tapes plus new climbing clips, the kind of messy overlap and fast motion a lab reel will not give you.

Why the Clip Never Leaves the Phone

Kim called the hard part processing AI workloads entirely on-device, with no separate server. Longer clips cost more work, so the team had to hold speed, battery drain, and heat in the same budget. Samsung Research shrank the model. MX then cut load in the path from decode to analysis, so the phone does not cook itself to follow a face.

The key challenge was processing AI workloads entirely on-device without a separate server. Longer videos require more computation, so we had to consider processing speed, power consumption, and heat generation.

Sunghwan Kim, Multimedia Development Group, Samsung MX

That local rule is the product, not a privacy footnote. A concert clip, a recital, or a kids’ match never has to go upstairs for a crop. Park also said the tool accepts video that was not shot on a Galaxy, so an old night on another brand’s camera can still get a FanCam cut once it sits in Gallery. Early tests of short clips finished in seconds, which is the point of Kim’s one-pass design.

Rival phones already track faces while you film, and some of the better stills tricks still want a network for the high-quality pass. FanCam is the other bet: keep the file here, accept the heat and the crop, and let the user pick the star after the noise dies down. @SamsungIndia put that pitch in one line in August: film it, then reframe later.

https://x.com/SamsungIndia/status/2085689955372687640

The Crop Makes Social Clips Soft

Because FanCam is a punch-in, it can only keep what the original clip already held. Kim’s own advice is to shoot a little wider than you would for a finished frame, and to use a high-resolution mode, because the export is a crop. If the singer is a small figure at the back of a hall, the new clip is a digital zoom of that figure. Testers who tried it on the regular Z Fold8, whose cameras are already softer than an Ultra, saw far-away subjects go slightly pixelated once the frame tightened.

The tracker itself is the part that holds. People who tried group clips said the chosen person stayed centered even when the shot was messy. The fight that follows is about the file you share. A social post can live with a softer crop. A clip you hoped to grade later cannot. Samsung does not run a second sharpening pass on the punched-in export, so what you get is the original pixels, enlarged.

The other hard limit is simpler. Beta notes and hands-on checks say the detector is built for people. Pets and other animals do not get a target. If the only moving thing in the clip is a dog crossing a park, FanCam has nothing to offer. You still have Auto Framing while you record, and you still have a tripod.

Official Fancams Already Crop Wide Stages

Samsung did not invent the cut. In K-pop, a fancam (jik-kaem in Korean) is a video locked on one member through a whole song, even when the broadcast camera has moved on. Music shows later started posting their own member cams. A lot of those official cuts now begin as a wide stage shot that is cropped in post, which is the same job FanCam is doing in Gallery, with a phone instead of an 8K truck.

A 2014 clip of EXID’s Hani is still the example people reach for when they explain how a single-member tape can travel farther than the group take. Fans have been doing the handheld version for years, often from mid-bowl seats, often on a Galaxy Ultra because of the zoom. The new button does not replace that culture. It productizes the edit those fans used to do by hand, and it does the same edit for a school concert or a Saturday match.

HOW FANCAMS GOT INTO GALLERY

1. 2014: A handheld clip of EXID’s Hani circulating on YouTube helps lock the single-member concert tape as a default share format.
2. July 22, 2026: Galaxy Unpacked in London ships My FanCam on the Z Fold8, Z Fold8 Ultra, and Z Flip8 with One UI 9.
3. August 28, 2026: The One UI 9 beta adds the same Gallery tool to the Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra in a handful of markets.
4. September 1, 2026: Park, Kim, and Hong describe the on-device model, the one-pass analysis, and the heat budget.
5. September 4, 2026: The Galaxy S26 FE goes on sale with My FanCam out of the box.

Hong’s brief started with fan cams of artists, then widened. She told the interview that being a fan, for her, means caring about someone, an artist, a family member, a friend, or yourself. The climbing footage and the dance-club tapes were not Easter eggs. They were the test set for that wider brief.

Which Galaxy Phones Have My FanCam

My FanCam ships on the Z Fold8, Z Fold8 Ultra, and Z Flip8 from the July 22 launch, and on the Galaxy S26 FE from September 4. The S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra have it in the One UI 9 beta as of August 28, with no date yet for the stable build worldwide. Samsung also says Galaxy AI features can vary by device, language, and region, so a listing is not a promise that every unit in every country will show the button on day one.

WHERE THE BUTTON SHOWS UP

The FE is the tell. It is a 6.7-inch phone on a 3nm Exynos 2500 with 8GB of RAM and a 4,900mAh battery, not a foldable, and it still runs the same Gallery model. Hardware notes on the Galaxy S26 FE review unit were about small gains in the chassis. The software side is where Samsung copied the Z8 party trick onto a slab that starts at $699.

FanCam rides One UI 9, and that is the same split that already showed up when One UI updates that skip older Galaxies left last-generation owners waiting. An early One UI 9 build on S25 hardware showed the FanCam entry before launch, which is a hint, not a commitment. Until Samsung publishes a device list, treat anything older than the Z8 and S26 lines as unconfirmed.

Shoot Wider Than You Think You Need

Kim’s tips are mechanical, and they all come from the fact that the export is a crop of a local file. A tripod helps on new clips. Old clips still work, including concert tapes, trips, and kids’ recitals that have been sitting in Gallery for years.

HOW TO FEED THE TRACKER A CLEAN SHOT

• Resolution: Use a high-resolution video mode, because the app will crop in on the person you pick.
• Framing: Leave extra space around the subject when you film, so the later punch-in still has picture at the edges.
• The tap: Pick a frame where the person is not covered by others, with the face, upper body, or full body in view.
• Old files: Run it on concert, trip, or school clips you already have; Park said non-Galaxy video is fair game.
• A tripod: Lock the camera for a workout or a recital, then cut a version centered on one person with nobody holding the phone.

The people-only limit still applies. So does heat on a long 4K file. Kim’s pipeline was built to keep that load in check, not to make it vanish. If a clip is long, expect the first analysis to take longer than those short tests, then the subject switches to stay instant.

Park’s last ask was small. Try it on footage you did not shoot yesterday, and on phones that are not Galaxies, and see whether the person you care about was in the wide shot the whole time. The S26 FE goes on sale in two days with that same on-device model, which is how a concert habit becomes a Gallery button on a $699 slab.