this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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I gotta wonder how awesome that camera is, tho. The rest of the phone got a few millimeters thinner, while the lenses on the camera got a bit fatter. Does it have a physical lens zoom instead of just digital zoom?
Half. A millimeter thinner. And then there's that ridiculous camera bump.
For scale, my Galaxy S10e is 7.9mm thick. Measuring it just now, with a screen protector and a lens protector, it's 9.5mm thick at the camera bump. And I already sometimes struggle to grip it.
Phones these days use multiple cameras in new lieu of optical zoom. My phone, for example, has a 12 MP 3x telephoto camera, a 200 MP main (wide) camera, and a 12 MP 0.6x ultrawide camera.
When you zoom in, the phone gauges lighting conditions and then decide whether to use a 3x camera, or the 200 MP one then zoom in digitally to make a 12 MP photo. (Both produce great results.) You can always manually choose which camera to use, of course, and even use the full image sensor in the main lens to create massive 200 MP images.
Not sure if doing it this way is actually better than a single camera with an optical zoom lens, but phone manufacturers seem to think so. I've even achieved good results going up to 10x digital zoom with the 200 MP camera; beyond that you really start to notice the upscaling artifacts. However, 5x digital zoom looks as good as optical 3x shots to my eyes.
Only 2x for this one, the fatter iPhones do more. They have to do some magic by using the different sensors and lenses for different zoom levels though.
I used to have a Sony Ericsson candybar phone back before smart phones that had an adjustable zoom lens for the camera like an SLR's. It was really the main reason to get the phone.