Samsung announced their 2013 flagship phone, the GS4, in mid-March. Assuming they do the same thing next year, that means we’re just eight months away from the GS5. It’s crazy to already be talking about the GS5, but hear me out on this.

Last week, Nokia unveiled a new Windows Phone with a 41 megapixel camera. When you take a picture, the device stores two copies of the image. One with the full blown resolution, and another that uses seven pixels to create a single “PureView” pixel which has less noise and more accurate color reproduction. Nokia assumes that you’re going to share that smaller 5 megapixel photo on services like Facebook and Twitter, but you’ll have that 41 megapixel version should you need to do stuff like cropping.

Let’s do some basic math. If Nokia needs seven pixels to create a 5 megapixel image, then that means to create a 1920 x 1080 photo using the equivalent algorithms, you’d need 14.5 megapixels. Considering that the GS4 has 13 megapixels, adding an extra 1.5 megapixels doesn’t seem like much a challenge. Nokia’s camera also has optical image stabilization, which I’m sure Samsung’s engineers could easily clone.

Why 1920 x 1080? Because most people view photos on their smartphones, and the images that do get uploaded to social networks almost always get resized, so full HD resolution is more than enough for anyone.

There’s also the question of Samsung’s camera app. I’m not a fan of manually picking a shooting mode before taking a photo. Most people, myself included, take their phone out of their pocket, launch the camera app, take a photo, and put the phone back inside their pocket. This is why I wrote an article last month saying Samsung should copy Nokia’s Smart Camera app which takes 10 quick photos in succession and then lets you pick a shooting mode after the fact.

So let’s bring all of this together. Samsung should put a 14.5 megapixel camera in the GS5 that has optical image stabilization. Their standard camera app should capture two photos when you click the shutter button. One with the full resolution that you can use for cropping and editing, the other a 1920 x 1080 image to share with friends and family. There should also be a separate “Smart Camera” app that takes 10 of these 1920 x 1080 photos which you can then manipulate with things like “Smile Shot”, “Eraser Mode”, or any of those other modes.

Is all of this too much to ask for? I don’t think so.