The rumored Google Pixel 7 Ultra could be a camera champion – as long as it borrows or one-ups this Samsung feature.
According to one rogue leak, the Google Pixel 7 could be joined by a premium sibling – I’m not talking about the 7 Pro, but another, possibly even higher-end alternative. As a photography fan, this news had my mind racing. Google’s phones are regularly on TechRadar’s list of the best camera phones, and if this hypothetical future powerhouse didn’t need to consider things like ‘affordability’, it could have a chance of bumping the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra out of the top spot. But if that’s going to happen, there’s one camera feature from that powerful Samsung phone that Google must emulate – or better, improve upon: The periscope zoom camera. There were many Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra camera features I loved testing: the Pro-tier video recording mode, the simple Single Take tool, the wonderful Portrait capture mode, and so on. But when I think back on my testing time with the phone, it’s that periscope zoom camera that stands out. This telephoto periscope camera had a 10MP 1.12um sensor paired with an f/4.9 230mm periscope lens, which offered 10x optical zoom over the ‘main’ camera. It’s used for zooming in close to far-away subjects. Initially, I was playing around with this to see how far I could jump around in a landscape, snapping distant buildings and landmarks from afar, but I quickly found it even better for taking snaps of birds and insects. Plus, I relied on it for « macro-looking » snaps of things like flowers and people, as I love the way depth of field looks on lenses with a longer focal length.
