Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra's 5x zoom camera is not the disaster I thought it would be

Opinion
By published

Less zoom, more quality

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

The grumbling you heard was me upon learning that Samsung planned to cut the optical zoom on its flagship Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, from the 10x optical it had been on the S23 Ultra to just 5x optical zoom. My favorite Galaxy feature was gone and I could not understand why. 

Now that the Galaxy S24 line has launched and I even had a little hands-on time with the titanium-rich Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, I'm ready to reassess my crankiness and consider that maybe – just maybe – Samsung did the right thing.

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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra camera app views
Samsung Galaxy S24 10x zoom view(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Now, the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra will have parity on the telephoto zoom front. Two 5x zoom cameras, no periscope necessary. Samsung, though, made a rather significant choice that, even in my brief hands-on, made me realize that Samsung might still pull ahead in the zoom front.

Backing the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra's 5x zoom camera is a giant 50MP sensor. That's a whole lot of pixels and far more than you'll get with Apple's best zoom. More interestingly, Samsung is still claiming its S24 Ultra has 10x zoom. It's right there in the camera app after 5x (see the gallery above). Can't say I'm thrilled that Samsung makes no distinction between optical and digitally-assisted zoom in the app.

So what's going on here? Well, Samsung is using a fairly common trick. While its 5x optical zoom might bin the 50MP of pixels down to a 12MP shot, its 10x zoom looks at the entire 50MP frame and selects 12MP in the center for a full-resolution "zoom" image.

I've heard critics say that while Samsung offered us 10x optical zoom on the S23 Ultra, the low megapixel count meant that the overall image quality was sub-par and possibly even muddy (it's true that the images did not withstand much pinch and zooming). Now, we get more megapixels from a new sensor that could result in a better, final "10x zoom" product.

I will always favor true 10x optical zoom over anything digital, but I also get the intention here, and in my brief interaction with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, I started to see how this managed 10x zoom might not be as awful as I thought.

I can't quit you, 10x

Look, I still want smartphone companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google, to break the 5x optical zoom barrier and do it with as many pixels as possible but I also understand the tradeoff necessary to make that possible.

In a regular camera, the only way to achieve zoom is ever larger and longer lenses. A zoom needs distance from the glass lens to the sensor and space to draw enough light into that space. Our flat slab phones are not designed to support that. For Samsung and Apple, it will always be a tradeoff. If you do squeeze the necessary periscope inside a phone, you might be giving up a tiny bit of battery or maybe Samsung wouldn't have been able to include the Galaxy S24 Ultra's much larger vapor chamber, something that will keep the phone running cooler, more efficiently, and maybe longer.

It's early days with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. I'm still not happy that Samsung dropped the 10x optical zoom but I can, I think, accept this optical/digital/sensor compromise. Will my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 10x photos be as good as the ones I captured with the Galaxy S23 Ultra? They might be better. They might also be a little worse.

I'll reserve final judgment but I think Samsung may have a point here.

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Lance Ulanoff
Lance Ulanoff
Editor At Large

A 38-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases and “on line” meant “waiting.” He’s a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He also wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium called The Upgrade.


Lance Ulanoff makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Mark, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC.