Samsung’s Galaxy S24 phones and other recent smartphones have a new way to squeeze better camera technology out of all those pixels on high-resolution image sensors. That’s the part of your phone’s camera that actually records that sunset or your kid racing down the soccer field.
A few years ago, your smartphone probably had a 12-megapixel image sensor that took 12-megapixel images. But that direct relationship is getting looser, which is why an Apple iPhone 15 Pro shows a 2x camera option without actually having a dedicated 2x camera.
I call the technology “crop zoom,” and I’m a big fan of the approach. It’s not a gimmick.
It’s slowly bringing us some of the photographic versatility you get from a traditional camera with a zoom lens. To improve photographic flexibility, phones are sprouting additional cameras — the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has four cameras on the back and a selfie cam on the front — but crop zoom gives you more photo options without more camera hardware. That means it can help you out, whether you own a flagship phone or a more modest model.
Samsung is using the technology in its newest Galaxy phones, announced Wednesday. All the S24 models have a 50-megapixel main camera that’ll shoot lower-resolution shots at 2x zoom. And the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a new 50-megapixel 5x telephoto camera that’ll shoot 12-megapixel shots at 10x zoom, too.
Cameras have become the single most important feature on smartphones. Photos can be precious, and we can share them immediately with friends and family to bring them into the moment. Smartphone makers spend more time describing cameras than any other new feature, camera lenses have become showy bulges on the backs of our phones, and high-end phones have more and more cameras to cover more shooting situations.
See also: How Close Is That Photo to the Truth? What to Know in the Age of AI
You may have been warned about the empty promises of digital zoom, a pixel magnification technology that’s far less useful than the…
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