this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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Actually they did put a real telephoto lens in it, which I think is a real zoom up to 5x? But yes, digital zoom is most things.
I bought a Huawei P30pro in 2016. Now I've got a Samsung S24 basic model. This is garbage in comparison, despite being almost a decade newer. The camera AI isn't bad, and the video quality is great, but the optics are just fucking terrible.
My Huawei was actually useful and the I felt the camera was pretty adequate even for niche long term exposure shots that you'd normally definitely want a tripod and an SLR to take. Okay granted the stabilisation on the S24 is probably better for like hand held low light, but everything else is worse.
The Huawei had an optical 10x zoom (and up to 50x with digital but who cares about digital). Very impressive macro photos, I didn't even need a loop to check the trichomes on my ganja.
Had to sacrifice a soul a little with prolly being on some Chinese spy lists now because of all the Huawei accounts I have but eh, it is what it is.
I was a tiny bit considering maybe getting the Pura 80 Ultra. It's almost got a 10x zoom again. Idk why they went back on it. Too expensive to make? Honestly in the past 10 years not a lot of phones with that sort of zoom.
Yes, the optics on phones have a very non-linear curve over the decades, we've had great lenses predating Androids & iPhones.
All the dev goes into sensors & postprocessing (while the development of lenses is mostly in miniaturization).