Zooming can be "faked" with a single lens, but ultrawide shots can't be faked.
Pretty much every smartphone already has zooming. It's "digital" zooming, which doesn't offer the best quality photos, but that's something Google addressed to some degree with its AI and software smarts in its Pixel phones so far.
So, zooming can be faked with digital zooming. But you know what can't be faked? Ultrawide photos. Indeed, not even Google's AI can fake scenery and details that are out of reach of a normal smartphone camera lens. To get that extra scenery and detail, you need a lens that will actually capture them: an ultrawide lens.
So, that's why I say dedicating an entire lens to zoomed photos — something that every smartphone can already do — is a waste.
Ultrawide lenses can capture more scenery and details of your surrounding, which can make for better photos. Here's a photo taken with the regular smartphone camera lens on the OnePlus 7 Pro:
And here's a photo taken with an ultrawide lens on the OnePlus 7 Pro, where I capture more of the lake, sky, and surroundings in general of this absurdly beautiful place called Lake Moraine in Banff, Canada.
Earlier this week, a Google design director proved how a $400 Google Pixel 3a can take incredible zoomed photos with just a single lens, which shows why the Pixel 4 doesn't need a dedicated zoom lens.
People thought that a Google design director was teasing the Pixel 4's camera in an incredible Instagram shot, but the photo was actually taken with a $400 Pixel 3a, which was zoomed and cropped to the point that it was considered "20x" zoom.
If a $400 Pixel 3a can deliver 20x zoom that looks as good as the photo above with a single lens, then we don't need a dedicated zoom lens on the Pixel 4. We need an ultrawide lens.
There's one thing about the rumors that's not quite right, and it gives me hope.
XDA-Developers is a respected and reliable source, and if the code in the unreleased version of Google's Camera app is accurate, it would certainly suggest that a second camera lens on the Pixel 4 might be a telephoto lens. Indeed, it literally says "telephoto" in the code.
But there's one detail that doesn't seem quite right, and it gives me hope. 9to5Google said that the code suggests the telephoto camera is going to be 16 megapixels, and that the regular camera lens will be 12 megapixels.
Here's the thing: zoomed lenses don't typically have more megapixels than the regular camera lens on most smartphones.
On the OnePlus 7 Pro, the telephoto camera is 8 megapixels versus the regular camera's 48 megapixel.
On the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10, and the LG G8, both the regular and telephotos camera are 12 megapixels.
Meanwhile, the ultrawide camera lenses on all the phones listed above are 16 megapixels — the same number of megapixels that 9to5Google suggests for the supposed telephoto lens in the Pixel 4.
Regardless of the number of pixels, ultrawide camera lenses typically have more — not fewer — megapixels than regular or telephotos lenses. It's a little smidgen of hope against some pretty convincing rumors. Still, rumors are rumors — not concrete facts.
