The gaping hole in Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra camera plan - where's the long-range zoom?

See, it’s not that having a 3x and 5 x zoom snappers is necessarily a bad idea by itself, but this combo doesn’t quite seem like the most versatile one you can go for to take advantage of having a whopping four cameras on the back of your phone.

To be more specific, now that the 50MP 3x camera will have the resolution needed to give us lossless quality 6x zoom, why the need for a 5x camera? The two focal lengths are incredibly similar.

To go a step farther, I can think of at least three other zoom camera setups that look more practical to me. Let’s take a look:

2.5x optical - 5x lossless - 7.5x optical - 15x lossless

The first alternative I can think of, and one that sounds like the best idea to *me* is going with a 2.5x zoom camera, which is going to be more practical for Portrait Mode photos as well as getting a nicer focal length when you want to avoid the slightly unnatural 1x photos, which really don’t work great if you want a slightly more “professional” framing.

A 2.5x zoom camera also means 5x lossless zoom, completely eliminating the need for a dedicated 5x zoom snapper, and thus freeing up the space for something with a longer zoom range when you REALLY want/need to zoom. To be more specific, I’d go with something like a 7.5x optical zoom, which can losslessly zoom to a whopping 15x - ideal for wildlife photos/videos.

3x optical - 6x lossless - 10x optical - 20x lossless

Now, if you really want to push the boundaries of optical zoom on a phone, there’s always the option to go back to the good old 10x optical zoom camera of older Galaxy Ultra models.

Of course, I absolutely wouldn’t go with that option if it meant going back to the same 10MP sensor with a tiny sensor size and an even tinier aperture, which falls apart in anything but the best lighting.

However, camera hardware, camera processing, and image processing (in Qualcomm’s chips) has advanced quite a bit since the first 10x optical zoom Samsung used in the Galaxy S21 Ultra, and I’m positive it’s possible to get a much better hardware solution for a 10x optical zoom camera today.

Say upgrading to a 50MP 10x optical zoom with a wider aperture was an option - in that case, we’d be talking about 10x optical and a pretty jaw-dropping 20x lossless zoom - unseen on any smartphone ever. Then, this can be combined with the more conventional 3x-4x zoom snapper for short-range photos/videos with 6/8x lossless zoom.

Everything in between would have to be aided by more conventional sensor-cropping/upscaling, as well as a good AI algorithm that can restore detail.

Single 3.7x 200MP camera with 7.5x and 10x lossless zoom (you know - like Vivo)

Speaking of AI, the third alternative Galaxy S25 Ultra camera setup would involve (and I bet you saw that coming) just a single, super-high res 200MP camera with (say) 3.7x optical zoom. If it sounds familiar, it’s because Vivo has been utilizing this setup for a couple of years now, and I’d say surprisingly successfully.

The reason you can get away with using only one zoom camera is because the 200MP sensor allows sensor-cropping on multiple levels thanks to the extra pixels compared to a 50MP camera. Hence, you’d be able to get 3.7x optical zoom combined with 7.5x lossless and 10x lossless zoom - all from one camera.

The other highly underrated benefit of this setup is consistency in color, exposure and light-gathering - since you’re always using the same camera to zoom instead of two cameras, which need different calibration.

The cherry on top, of course, is the massive sensor and aperture you can get since now you have the space to accommodate a large periscope sensor. In the case of the latest Vivo X200 Pro, we’re talking about a 1/1.4 200MP sensor with an f/2.7 aperture, which just blows the 5x camera on the Galaxy S24 Ultra out of the water. Not only is the zoom camera of the Vivo X200 Pro sensor over 2x larger than the one in the S24 Ultra, but it is almost as large as the primary (1/1.3) camera of the Galaxy too - a pretty incredible feat for a zoom camera.

The only drawback I can think of when it comes to this single-zoom camera setup is that it does need the help of AI upscaling to give you good 10-20x zoom photos, but if the samples I’ve seen from the Vivo are anything to go by, they can easily beat what Samsung or Apple has to offer right now.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra’s camera setup is already locked in, but the Galaxy S26 Ultra could/should shake things up with more versatile long-range zoom options

In the end, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will have a 200MP primary camera, which is capable of taking 2x and 4x lossless zoom shots, which (in my view) makes the presence of 3x and 5x zoom cameras a little redundant.

It’s really nice to have the 2,3,4,5,6x range covered… But what about long range zoom? In other words, zoom between 5-10x and beyond?

As always, some compromises must be made - you can’t have it all… However, I’m not sure Samsung has made the most appropriate choices here. And something is telling me the Galaxy S26 Ultra might have to change that. But let’s see…

As mentioned earlier, Vivo achieves identical or even greater flexibility with a single zoom camera and (a ton of AI and sensor cropping), which raises some questions about the need to have a 3x-5x optical zoom setup.

Over at the “real camera” scene, one of the most popular (premium) pocket cameras, the Sony RX100 VII does 8x optical and 12-16x “Clear Image” zoom for maximum flexibility in a camera that fits in your pocket.

And while I’m not who Samsung is competing with, or who it wants to be competing with, the Galaxy S25 Ultra camera setup seems bizarrely redundant to take on the competition - or beat it.