Product test
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Space Zoom: what happens when you photograph a river at 100x zoom?
by Dominik Bärlocher
100x zoom for the second time: The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra after the update
22.4.2020
Translation: machine translated
The latest system update brings camera improvements to the Galaxy S20 Ultra. That's why the 100x zoom needs to be tested again. This time, however, the setting is Aargau and not eastern Switzerland.
At last! Samsung has rolled out an update for the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. The release notes promise a lot. Among other things: "Camera Improvements".
The update arrived about two hours before I wanted to publish an extensive S20 Ultra review. My review would have been a spoiler, essentially stating that with specs like these, there should simply be more performance. Better pictures, longer battery life, less heat development. That sort of thing. The update promises to fix all that. Maybe. The release notes don't give that much information. Therefore: emergency brake, re-test the camera at the weekend.
The 100x zoom is still useless
The zoom function has been improved. The 100x zoom is still useless. Yes, it is an image. Yes, it is 100x zoom. No, nothing is sharp or recognisable. As my travels have taken me to Aargau, there is no Lake Constance to see this time, but the view from Berikon in the direction of Zufikon/Hermetschwil.
"Yes, but," I can already hear critics of this statement, "the competition isn't any better."
True. This image shows the same panorama, but from the camera of the Huawei P40 Pro.
The difference, however, is that Huawei doesn't go and advertise the camera in a big way and doesn't chant phrases like "The Phone to End All Cameras" in the windows of mobile shops.
This is unfair to the consumer, i.e. you. Samsung should still be ashamed of this advertising.
Better up to 30x
However, something has changed in the lower zoom levels. Up to a zoom of 30x, if we only work with the zoom levels suggested by the system, the system is better than before the update. The loss of image quality only becomes so bad above 30x that I would no longer use the image for anything.
At 30x, however, there is simply not enough data left to produce a good image, even if I correct the levels.
At 100x, there's nothing more to be gained even with Photoshop.
The zoom on details
A trick that iPhone users in particular like to use is the zoom for macro shots. The iPhone does not have a dedicated macro mode, but detail shots can be quite sexy. Therefore, a trick in the bag: Simply use the zoom. The closer you zoom in and the better the AI can work with the image data, the more beautiful your macro shot will be. The Huawei P30 Pro, whose AI can take dedicated macro pictures, was particularly good. The P40 Pro no longer has a macro mode.
The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra also does without a dedicated macro mode. Does this mean that detail shots are not possible without the zoom trick? No. The S20 performs well at 1x zoom, but focusses extremely strongly on depth of field. So a fake macro shot in which everything is sharp is only possible with difficulty or without physical depth.
For comparison
But if you have to work with the zoom, then the details quickly get lost. At 100x you can see the spring of my shock absorber well, you can also see that it's probably part of a motorbike, but the colours, shapes and reflections of the spring look fake. The AI is working at full speed, turning the red-orange component into a bright orange. It is more obvious here than in the landscape shot that the Samsung phone lacks data to make the whole thing look nice.
It's also nice that the navigator appears at the top left of the screen at 30x.
Since our Content Management System does not allow large data and compresses images additionally to save bandwidth while reading through, I have created a zip archive with all images of this article for you.
Video: Better. Much better.
Up to and including 4x zoom, the image is decent. After that it gets difficult. At the maximum zoom level of 10x, the pixel flicker is then too obvious, too noticeable for me to use the video data for anything outside of a test.
The update brings a lot, but is too late
The update turns the below-average and scandalously poor camera of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G into a camera to be proud of. It only fulfils the advertising promise of a 100x zoom in technological terms, but not in practical terms. The images are not usable from a zoom level of over 30x, which is impressive in itself.
But the update should have come sooner. I don't see what significant changes had to be made to Android to make such a delay worthwhile. This update shouldn't have been "Yes, we'll do it then", but should have been there at the launch of a phone so that early adopters don't have to think that their phone might be good one day.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
