You told us: You’re split over your phones’ camera zoom quality

All smartphones offer camera zoom functionality of some kind, whether it’s via a telephoto/periscope camera, hybrid zoom tech, or a purely software-based approach. 

Regardless of the technology used, we wanted to find out whether you were happy with your phones’ camera zoom quality. So we posed this question last week, and here’s how you answered it.

Are you happy with your phone’s camera zoom quality?

Results

We posted this poll on September 9, with almost 1,500 votes tallied until now. The winner by a single vote was the “no” camp, with 34.43% of respondents saying they weren’t happy with their phones’ camera zoom quality. By comparison, 34.36% of surveyed readers said they were indeed happy with their phones’ zoom quality.

Meanwhile, 31.2% of respondents felt that their phones’ zoom quality was merely okay. In other words, just under two-thirds of all polled readers felt there was room for improvement when it came to their phones’ zoomed-in results.

For what it’s worth, we’ve also seen a slowdown in brands adopting telephoto cameras in the upper-mid range and affordable flagship tiers. This is in stark contrast to 2019, when the likes of Xiaomi, Realme, and OnePlus all offered affordable flagships and/or mid-rangers with telephoto cameras.

Comments

• mattc: My old Huawei P30 Pro still takes great zoom photos, in daylight, and the ????
• Thelonius: I barely use zoom and simply moving closer is often better than relying on a lower quality telephoto camera. Even Samsung phones can’t maintain color uniformity across lenses.
• RickO: My Oppo Find X2 Pro has brilliant optical zoom picture quality but digital enhancement out to 60x is great only in good light. 
• Ajay Rathore: I have a s22u and it does take good photos though I hate that you can’t use the telephoto camera in night have to use the expert raw.
• JZ VR: 10X optical zoom on my Mate 40 Pro Plus, Huawei is still the market leader.
• PhoenixWitti: I was at Willie B stadium. Took a photo of some friends across the stadium, from the nosebleed section; one with the Fold 4 30x, and another with a Nikon Z6ii/200mm. Phone zoom, all of them, is a joke, even on a good day.
• Albin: “Okay” at 2x or 3x with my current single-lens Moto Z3P using GCam HDR+ enhancement, but would avoid digital telephoto without the effective computational help. Optical telephoto is on the “must have” list for my next phone. (“Z” phone fits an optcal 10x Hasselblad Moto Mod snap on, but they are pricey and reportedly a bit clunky.
• Eric Koop: I have a OnePlus 7T which has a 2x telephoto camera, the lens is so poor that you get better zoomed in shots by using the main camera and digitally zooming in. Even with ideal lighting conditions the main shooter outperforms the telephoto.