Can you really take 30x shots on a phone with a 5x zoom camera?
Robert Triggs, Head of Testing and Data Science at Android Authority, specializes in technical analysis, benchmarking, and smartphone camera reviews. With 10+ years of experience, he offers readers deep dives into mobile tech trends, chipsets, 5G, and more.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
If there’s one thing I must have in my smartphone camera, it is a robust long-distance zoom that brings me closer to the action. Today’s best Android phones offer a wide range of zoom options, with different zoom levels, lens apertures, and sensor sizes contributing to some rather different capabilities. Just because it has a 5x periscope camera doesn’t mean they’re all the same.
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To test what this means for actual photos, I’ve grabbed the Pixel 9 Pro, Galaxy S25 Ultra, OPPO Find X8 Pro, and Xiaomi 15 Ultra to showcase the differences these sensor specs can make. The latter has a huge number of megapixels to work with, while the Find X8 Pro has the longest optical zoom. Flagships from Google and Samsung sit somewhere in between.
Here’s a quick rundown of how each of these phones’ longest-range zoom options compare.
| Periscope Zoom | Pixel 9 Pro XL | Galaxy S25 Ultra | Find X8 Pro | Xiaomi 15 Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aperture | f/2.8 | f/3.4 | f/4.3 | f/2.6 |
| Sensor Size | 1 / 2.55 | 1 / 2.52 | 1 / 2.51 | 1 / 1.4 |
| Megapixels | 48MP | 50MP | 50MP | 200MP |
| Focal Length | 113mm | 111mm | 135mm | 100mm |
| Zoom factor | 5x | 5x | 6x | 4.3x |
On paper, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra looks to have a significant advantage in terms of key specs. It has by far the biggest sensor (albeit split among a greater number of smaller pixels) and the widest aperture of the bunch. The other three have pretty similarly sized image sensors, but the Find X8 Pro has the narrowest aperture, possibly making it the weakest of the group. Perhaps its 6x zoom factor can bridge that gap at long range?
But we’ll let the pictures do the talking. For today’s test, we’re eyeballing the fine details via 100% crops to really help separate the good from the very best.
A “modest” 10x zoom
Our first semi-macro shot in bright outdoor lighting shouldn’t stress these cameras too much, but it does already reveal a few limitations of pushing these lenses out to 10x. First, note the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a slight halo around the flower’s edge, hinting at either poor lens aberration or multi-frame processing that isn’t stitching together quite right. The camera’s details already look a little splotchy here as well, and there’s some slight noise visible in the transitions between light and dark. The Pixel 9 Pro XL also shows a small amount of noise on the darker elements of our crop, likely where the phone’s HDR algorithm has brightened the shadows, which also explains the lack of contrast. However, there’s nothing too untoward here.
DATE . Apr/21/2025
