Something strange is going on with the new smartphone telephoto camera technology right now, and it seemingly all stems from China. It’s kind of wild, and we have to talk about it.
Hey guys, I’m Ryan Thomas, and have you noticed the recent shift in strategy here? We started out with five-times Periscope telephoto cameras that really impressed the world. We then saw a couple of ten-times Periscope cameras that went even further and stretched the focal length range on the cameras you’d find on the back of your phone. They were phenomenal.
The Shift to 3x and 3.5x Periscope Lenses
In the last year or so, though, we’ve seen more three-times and three-and-a-half-times Periscopes popping up, which seem to be worse on the surface—until you realize that to go along with this slight drop-off in optical range, companies have been stuffing huge sensors underneath them. You can crop way further than the three-times optical limit and still get phenomenal imagery.
This seems to be a thing on phones coming out of China exclusively, but the trend hasn’t made its way to iPhones, Galaxies, or Pixels yet, which is really interesting. On Samsung Ultras, you’ll find a pretty meh three-times as sort of an in-between for the 24mm and the 120mm, where you can pinch in a little bit but not so far. And the five-times optical Periscope in those cameras stretches further but generally tends to be a little bit too zoomed in for a lot of shots.
Five-times is very handy to have, and of course, it gives you the stronger base. But a lot of photos—ones taken with real cameras, stuff like portraits and architecture—are shot between 70mm and 85mm, which is roughly three to four times on a smartphone camera.
It’s almost a bit like a sweet spot in photography because you can apply a crop to get to five times if you want to and not lose heaps of quality. You’ll still get to that 120mm mark. Three times is a far more convenient base to work from, I think, and it’s not too cropped. If you want to, it gives you that flexibility.
OnePlus and the Rise of Large-Sensor Telephoto Cameras
OnePlus might have been the first to have done this in a high-profile phone in the US with its OnePlus 12. I probably shoot 70% to 80% of my photos with the three-times lens day to day. It’s a pretty healthy 64-megapixel half-inch sensor with a three-times Periscope lens on top of it.
It does a great job offering a six-times native crop in the camera app, and of course, you can push this way further with diminishing quality as you pinch in. I shot some of my favorite ever photographs with the OnePlus 12 last year, and I leaned pretty heavily on that three-times shooter.
That’s great and all, but it pales in comparison to the real stuff—what Vivo, Honor, and some others are doing in China right now.
200MP Sensors in Telephoto Cameras
The 200-megapixel, 1/1.4-inch sensors that we’ve seen in Chinese telephoto cameras have genuinely blown me away. These are sensors that are essentially the same size as what you’d find in the main cameras of a lot of smartphones, and yet they offer crazy amounts of zooming capability.
They are putting the highest-end sensors in these things through a three-to-four-times Periscope lens, depending on the model. This gives you that 70mm to 85mm portrait-style lens with a massive sensor underneath it that can take images that don’t necessarily look like smartphone images.
There’s a razor-thin, shallow depth of field without the need for any kind of portrait mode. There’s far more light hitting the sensor because it’s just a bigger sensor than any of the Western smartphone telephoto cameras. So, low light is dramatically improved, dynamic range is better—just everything about these long-range shooters coming out of China is incredibly impressive.
Video and Macro Capabilities
This means that you can shoot standard video with the Periscope lens and get a blurry background without the need for portrait effects, which is pretty huge for mobile videographers as well. In the case of what Vivo is doing—I believe this is also the case on the X200 Pro—but what I have here is the X100 Ultra.
Not only are you able to shoot ultra-HD 4K 120p with that telephoto alongside the main, which is pretty cool, but that telephoto also has a macro setup. So, you can now get insanely close-up shots with a pinched-in camera, where we’ve seen other models use the ultra-wide for this kind of thing. It’s pretty crazy.
The Role of Computational Photography
It’s not just the hardware that’s impressive here, though that does play a massive part—arguably the biggest part of this story. The computational photography helping lift details so that you can crop in further is crucial in how this whole system works.
In modes like portrait mode, you can get super impressive photos that really sell the effect, more so than if you were just using a lesser sensor and lens combination.
The Drawbacks: Camera Bumps and AI Enhancements
There is a pretty huge caveat—okay, maybe two, actually.
These things require a bit of room, so you’re going to end up with a massive camera bump on the back. Maybe not all of them are going to be as big as we found on the X100 Ultra, but you can see the trend here. It’s immediately going to put people off, and these things tend to have massive circular camera bumps. I don’t think this is for style—you really do need quite a lot of room for such a crazy camera setup.
Processing is also a little controversial. Beyond ten-times zoom or more, there seems to be quite a lot of artificial sharpening going on. In some more extreme cases, you’ll notice that it almost obliterates all the details and texture and returns more of what looks like a watercolor painting.
Then there’s AI. With the Honor smartphone in particular, once you zoom past a certain amount, you can actually start to use the AI super zoom, which generates recreations of what it thinks might be there if you’re pinched in so far that there’s just not much detail in the scene.
Will Western Brands Follow This Trend?
Right now, it’s optional, which is fantastic—I really do appreciate that. But how long until this stuff is, well, part of the standard and expected smartphone camera experience?
Most people who use a Galaxy, iPhone, or Pixel are going to be more than happy with their five-times setups. Up to about ten times, they’re incredibly usable, with further cropping coming in handy for making out distant subjects. But I’ve never heard anyone say they needed a bigger zoom on their smartphone than what they currently have.
That probably indicates that we really won’t see much of this innovation coming to the West anytime soon. But these Chinese smartphone telephoto cameras have a lot of potential, and I see the three-times standard becoming the new five-times.
Until then, we’re making do with what we have. It’s seriously exciting, and really, who knows what the future will hold?
Are you a fan of what’s coming out of China? Would you ever buy a Chinese phone, or are you waiting for this kind of tech in Western smartphones? Let me know what you think!
