The Galaxy S21 Ultra was Samsung's first flagship with two zoom cameras on the back. It had a 3x telephoto lens for close-range zoom and a 10x one for long-range zoom, and the company used the same setup on the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Galaxy S23 Ultra as well.
But that is changing with the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Samsung has opted to replace the 10-megapixel 10x telephoto of the S23 Ultra with a 50-megapixel telephoto. This new camera has a wider aperture (f/3.4 vs f/4.9 on the S23 Ultra) and a larger pixel size (1.4 µm vs 1.12 µm on the S23 Ultra), which Samsung says helps the Galaxy S24 Ultra capture detailed photos in dim lighting conditions.
The 5x telephoto also has better optical image stabilization, and thanks to the 50MP sensor, 8K recording is made possible at both 1x and 5x zoom (though the frame rate is still limited to 30 fps for 8K videos).
Many folks have wondered how the new zoom camera will compare to the outgoing one, especially at 10x zoom and beyond. While we will only be able to test it in detail in our review, we did manage to take a few quick photos of some scenes at 3x, 5x, 10x, and 30x zoom, which can be seen in the gallery below (S24 Ultra photos are on the right).
As you might have noticed, not much has changed. As we go past 5x zoom, the Galaxy S24 Ultra photos are less washed out and have a deeper contrast, though sometimes the opposite can happen. At 10x zoom, the S24 Ultra does a better job of reducing noise, but again, this isn't always the case. The same goes for the sharpness and detail – the S24 Ultra doesn't always come out on top.
Overall, the Galaxy S24 Ultra doesn't offer any meaningful quality improvement. But the 5x telephoto still has a few benefits. The biggest one is that we have more range to work with between 3x and 10x. On previous devices, the 3x telephoto handled zoom up to 10x, and its lowly 10-megapixel resolution meant that quality took a notable dip past the 5x point.
But now, we get similar or better quality at 10x and beyond and photos captured at 5x-10x zoom look fantastic as well, at least when there's ample light. The 5x camera should also have better quality at night because of the wider aperture, though that is something we have yet to test.
Last but not least, the Galaxy S24 Ultra can capture portrait images at 5x zoom, similar to Apple's latest iPhones. That's in addition to the usual 1x and 3x portrait mode that were available earlier. The quality of 5x portraits seems to be a little soft, as seen in the picture above, but we haven't used it enough to say for sure right now.
We will be putting all the cameras on the Galaxy S24 Ultra through the paces in our full review, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out our hands-on experience with the phone in the video below.
