Samsung is using the 200MP sensor on the wrong camera

Samsung has been using 200MP main cameras on its Ultra phones for several years, starting with 2023’s Galaxy S23 Ultra. This enables benefits like 200MP full-resolution snaps and high-quality cropped zoom.

The recently launched Galaxy S26 Ultra retains the 200MP primary camera despite the wider aperture. However, I can’t help but think that Samsung is using the 200MP sensor on the wrong camera. here’s why.

There are some benefits to owning a phone with a 200MP main camera. One advantage is that you can shoot full-resolution 1x photos and still get detailed crops after the fact. This is handy if you want to get a 2x or 3x crop from your 1x photo without huge loss in image quality.

Another advantage of the 200MP main cameras is that they enable good quality 2x to 4x shots via lossless-resolution zoom. This is because the sensor has so many pixels that even cropping at 4x still gives you a ~12MP photo that hasn’t been enhanced. This zoom capability is especially great for mid-range phones without a telephoto camera. This means that cheaper phones can still produce good or better 2x to 4x photos. And I’m in favor of better camera zoom.

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

I would love to see Samsung’s Ultra phones adopt a 200MP telephoto camera instead of a 200MP main shooter. That’s because I firmly believe that all those megapixels could be put to better use for high-quality cropped zooms.

Android phones with telephoto cameras already offer lossless resolution up to a point. For example, the Nothing Phone 3 has a 3x 50MP camera capable of taking 6x the lossless-resolution snaps. Meanwhile, a phone like the Pixel 10 Pro can churn out 10x the lossless-resolution shots with its 48MP 5x camera. But zoom beyond those points, and these phones rely on super-resolution, AI, and other processing technologies to save your images.

However, 200MP telephoto cameras extend even further than 48MP or 50MP tele shooters. Oppo says its Find X9 Pro offers an impressive 13.2x lossless resolution zoom via a 200MP 3x camera. My own experience with the Vivo X300 Pro and its 200MP 3.5x camera is that you can still take good quality 10x photos with relatively shallow depth of field. However, image quality is a gamble at 15x to 20x. Additionally, even ~10x photos from these cameras are not immune to oversharpening or hideous watercolor effects. Still, check out some long-range 200MP telephoto camera samples below.

These phones also let you shoot full-resolution photos, allowing you to extract detailed crops after the fact. This usually wasn’t worth the effort on the first phones with 200MP tele cameras, but some of the latest phones now offer multi-frame image processing at up to 200MP resolution. This means you’re getting higher-quality full-resolution snaps with less oversharpening and less noise, which means your crops look better too.

My colleague Rita El-Khoury also thinks a 200MP 5x telephoto camera would be amazing. This will be a significant engineering challenge, because you have to somehow fit these parts into a relatively small space. Still, I’d love to see it too, as it would enable lossless-resolution shots at 10x and 20x.

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of 200MP telephoto cameras. So I would love to see Samsung switch its 200MP sensor from the main shooter to a tele lens. After this the company can use a larger 50MP sensor for its main camera. And who knows, this might solve the Ultra line’s notorious shutter lag problem once and for all.

In any case, it feels like Samsung is sticking to the 200MP main camera out of stubbornness more than anything else. It’s almost as if top company executives are only sticking with the 200MP main shooter because previous Ultra phones had it.

It’s also possible that Samsung is concerned about the thickness of the camera bump by adopting a 200MP periscope lens. It’s a legitimate concern, but I’m sure I’m not the only person who would take a camera bump if it meant better zoom.