A few days ago we witnessed the release of a new trio of Samsung — Galaxy S20 Ultra, Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20,
Let's start with the fact that all three smartphones are very similarand have ultra-modern filling. Version «Ultra» goes a bit beyond the other two brothers thanks to its incredible telescopic 10x optical zoom that can zoom up to 100x when the digital algorithms are turned on.
The Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20+ also have some pretty impressive camera modules. However, as it turns out, the Galaxy S20's telephoto lens isn't actually a telephoto lens.
If you look at the specificationsall three phones, you will see that in the parameters of the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 + it is indicated that there are telephoto lenses. Now traditionally, telephoto smartphones are instantly associated with optical zoom. Since it is typical in a telephoto lens to enlarge the image a little more.
But, oddly enough, the Samsung spec says that the telephoto lenses of the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 + have a 3x “hybrid optical zoom”. And that sounds weird.
Inquiring minds at NotebookCheck.net decided to dig deeper. Apparently it didn't take long. According to Samsung's own specifications for the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20+, the "telephoto lens" actually has a lens with a very wide field of view — almost as wide as the main camera lens. Essentially, the telephoto lens only provides 1.06 zoom compared to a regular camera. This means that the 3x "hybrid optical zoom" is in fact almost entirely digital.
This is what you can achieve with basicGalaxy S10e cameras — just click and zoom in to 3x. Well, the sharpness of the Galaxy S20 will probably be much better — We are sure that behind the so-called telephoto lenses of the S20 and S20+ there are 64 MP sensors.
It turns out that only the Galaxy S20 Ultra hasproper optical zoom and what can be called a telephoto lens. Despite this substitution of concepts, in fact, we are confident that they will provide amazing photo quality, as Samsung flagships usually do. Even that 3x hybrid optical zoom will probably look quite sharp. However, it is not clear why older generation Samsung phones — from Note 8 to Galaxy S9 and S10, to Note 10 — all had suitable telephoto lenses with true optical zoom. What happened to the S20 line phones?