Samsung is using a 200MP sensor on the wrong camera

Samsung Ultra phones have been using 200MP primary cameras for a few years now, with the 2023 Galaxy S23 Ultra. This enables benefits such as 200-megapixel full-resolution shots and high-quality cropped zoom.

Recently launched Galaxy S26 Ultra it retains the 200MP primary camera, albeit with a wider aperture. However, I can’t help but think that Samsung used a 200MP sensor on the wrong camera. Here’s why.

A phone with a 200-megapixel main camera has several advantages. One advantage is that you can take 1x photos at full resolution and still get detailed products after the fact. This is handy if you want to get a 2x or 3x crop from your 1x photo without a huge loss in image quality.

Another advantage of the 200-megapixel main cameras is that they allow for quality 2x to 4x shots with lossless resolution zoom. This is because the sensor has so many pixels that even cropping up to 4x still leaves an unenhanced ~12MP photo. This magnification is particularly large mid-range phones without a telephoto camera. This means that cheaper phones can still offer decent or even good 2x to 4x images. And I have improved camera zoom.

Again, all of Samsung’s Ultra phones have 3x 10MP telephoto cameras. So you don’t have to resort to a 3x or 4x product from the 200MP main camera when you have a 3x camera there. That being said, Samsung really needs to improve the 3x camera because it’s completely ancient at this point. But that’s an article for another day.

I’d like to see Samsung’s Ultra phones adopt a 200MP telephoto camera instead of a 200MP main shooter. That’s because I believe all those megapixels could be better used for high-quality cropped zoom.

Android phones with telephoto cameras already offer lossless resolution up to a point. For example, Nothing phone 3 It has 3x 50MP cameras, capable of capturing images with 6x lossless resolution. As a phone meanwhile Pixel 10 Pro It can spit out 10x lossless resolution footage from its 48MP 5x camera. But zoom beyond those points, and these phones rely on super-resolution, AI and other processing techniques to rescue your images.

However, 200MP telephoto cameras go further than 48MP or 50MP tele shooters. OPPO says so Find the X9 Pro The 200MP 3x camera offers an impressive 13.2x lossless resolution zoom. my experience with vivo X300 Pro and its 200MP 3.5x camera means you can still take 10x quality photos with relatively shallow depth of field. Image quality is a gamble at 15x to 20x. Additionally, even ~10x photos from these cameras aren’t immune to oversharpening or the dreaded watercolor effect. Nevertheless, check out the longer-range 200MP telephoto camera examples below.

These phones also allow you to take full-resolution photos, which allows you to produce a detailed product after the fact. On early phones with 200-megapixel cameras, this was usually not worth the trouble, but some of the latest phones now offer multi-frame image processing at 200-megapixel resolution. This means you get higher quality full resolution photos with less over-sharpening and reduced noise, meaning your products look better too.

My colleague Rita El-Khoury also thinks a 200MP 5x telephoto camera would be amazing. This would be a significant engineering challenge, as you would have to somehow fit these parts into a relatively small space. I’d like to see it though, as it would allow for lossless shooting at 10x and 20x.

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of 200MP telephoto cameras. So I’d like to see Samsung swap out the 200MP sensor from the main shooter for a telephoto lens. The company could then use a large 50MP sensor for its main camera. And who knows, this might solve the infamy of the Ultra line shutter lag problem once and for all.

Either way, it feels like Samsung has stubbornly stuck with the 200MP primary camera above all else. Almost all top company executives stick to just the 200MP main shooter because previous Ultra phones had it.

Perhaps Samsung is worried about the thickness of the camera bump, adopting a 200-megapixel periscope lens. It’s a fair concern, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who would take a camera bump if it means better zoom.