LOL unfortunately optics don't scale.
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.
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How about a display with no camera, no blue tooth, no SD card slot.... Just a touch display, that's internet and phone capable. Nothing else.
Maybe offer a modular camera you can attach somehow if people want that add on.
Could be a dumb terminal with the processing done elsewhere.
the camera is 0.3 megapixels and they just do generative upscaling on that
what do you mean that's not your dad? AI can't be wrong.
They're designed that way to get you to buy $50 cases injection molded from a few cents worth of plastic.