Is Samsung's smartphone camera ZOOM capability any good?

Smartphones these days can take really fantastic pictures, probably closing the gap with what dedicated mirrorless cameras can do.

With less than half the price of a professional camera, you'll get a smartphone with a very good set of camera lenses and still have the luxury of a phone within it.

The geeks would say it all comes down to computational photography. While some nerdy others would say the pictures from a smartphone are really bad in the real sense of it.
Whichever one it is, the most important thing is the impression it makes. And trust me, the smartphone camera game is crazy good these days.

So I decided to do a simple test with my Trusty Note 20 Ultra and test one aspect that has really been a subject that stands Samsung phones out in the competition - the ZOOM reach.
While my Note might only do a fraction of what it's latest counterparts can do, I believe the story of how well it does, might still be similar across board.

The Note 20 Ultra was released in 2020 as a successor to the Note 10 Plus and a predecessor to the S21 Ultra. It comes with a

• 108mp main sensor (pixel-binned to 12mp) camera
• 12mp periscope 5x optical zoom lens, with UP TO 50X digital zoom
• 12mp ultrawide camera.

The focus would be the periscope zoom camera.
Here are samples and here how well it resolves the pictures:

Ultrawide camera. This captures a very wide scope. Very suitable for landscape pictures. The aim is is to visualize a street post in the distance - quite invisible at this distance

The main camera lens (at 12mp). The street post outline can be appreciated at this distance

5x periscope camera at 5x optical zoom. The sign is quite visible at this level. Let'ssee if zooming in digitally will make it better

5x periscope camera at 10x digital zoom. The picture is a bit clearer and larger compared to 5x zoom

5x periscope camera at 50x zoom. The street sign can be well visualized compared to the main 1x camera, and obviously digitally processed compared to the 5x zoom. It however allows us visualize the sign better, though the noise is very much

Ultrawide camera showing a profile of what's in the distance. Note the blue marker of the building and crane in the distance

50x zoom into the crane and the building in the distance. This seems pretty impressive for the amount of detail preserved.

What do you think about the pictures and detail rendering?
Do you think the Samsung zoom is any much good?

The more recent Samsung flagships like the S21, S22, S23 and S24 Ultras have made some significant imporvement in the sensor sizes and detail rendering, but minimal improvements in the digital zoom capabilities.

But the question is would you find use for these features?

For me, I use them only when I travel. There are things you can only capture at a distance and the zoom cameras come in very helpful, though the pictures are mostly digitally sharpened.
For online sharing and posting, the pictures are mostly more than enough.

What are your thoughts?

Camera	Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra
Inbuilt Lenses	108mp (12mp pixel-binned) (f/1.8), 12mp telephoto (f/3.0), 12mp ultrawide (f/2.2)
Editing	No edits

All pictures taken by me.

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