{"id":472,"date":"2024-11-26T05:45:22","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T05:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/?p=472"},"modified":"2024-11-26T05:45:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T05:45:22","slug":"nearly-every-phone-has-this-one-annoying-hardware-feature-its-time-for-phone-makers-to-ditch-ultra-wide-cameras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/2024\/11\/26\/nearly-every-phone-has-this-one-annoying-hardware-feature-its-time-for-phone-makers-to-ditch-ultra-wide-cameras\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly every phone has this one annoying hardware feature \u2013 it’s time for phone makers to ditch ultra-wide cameras"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ultra-why bother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The iPhone 16 (Image credit: Future)
Pick up any modern phone \u2013 be it one of the best iPhones or best Android phones \u2013 and you\u2019re likely to find a rear panel adorned with two, three, or even four cameras. In most cases, at least one of these cameras will be an ultra-wide lens \u2013 commonly referred to as a 0.5x or 0.6x zoom, compared to the main snapper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple, for example, markets the base-model iPhone 16 as having a 4x optical zoom range thanks to an inner crop on its main camera and the 0.5x \u201cmagnification\u201d offered by the ultra-wide camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But beyond neat figures for marketing and pseudo-zoom trickery, can any of us actually remember if we even wanted an ultra-wide camera to begin with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first phone to really make an impact by having two cameras was the iPhone 7 Plus<\/a>, which pushed the idea of the dual camera setup into the mainstream. It came equipped with a wide-angle main camera and a 2x telephoto camera, at a time when even decent digital zoom wasn\u2019t a given on smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

>>>>616-00249 Battery for Apple iPhone 7 Plus 7+<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The iPhone 7 Plus launched in 2016 with a dual camera setup
The revolutionary iPhone X<\/a>, and its follow-up the iPhone XS<\/a>, kept this momentum going, and the rivals of the day followed suit, with the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus<\/a> also sporting a telephoto camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since the iPhone 11, though, it\u2019s been seen as normal to fit premium, flagship handsets with ultra-wide secondary cameras, and the more useful telephoto lens has increasingly become a tertiary luxury. And in the budget world, telephoto lenses are a real rarity compared to the common \u2013 and presumably cheaper \u2013 ultra-wide option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultra-wide cameras have their uses. The lesser focal distance of an ultra-wide camera means you can get up close to subjects, enabling macro photography. And sometimes you just need to fit more stuff in the frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, for day-to-day photography \u2013 which is the majority of photography done with a smartphone \u2013 even a 2x telephoto zoom is so much more useful; it virtually extends the photographer’s reach to help them capture a wider variety of day-to-day happenings \u2013 not to mention better-looking portraits and detailed close-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ultra-wide cameras affixed to smartphones are also rarely meaningfully corrected by the phone\u2019s image processing pipeline, meaning people and objects at the fringes of the image appear unnaturally stretched out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

>>>>616-00514 Battery for Apple iPhone XS A1920 A2097 A2098 A2100<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Xiaomi Mix Flip doesn’t have an ultra-wide camera (Image credit: Xiaomi)
Luckily, there does seem to be a course correction in motion. Xiaomi affixes telephoto cameras to several of its mid-range models, and even the new Xiaomi Mix Flip foldable has a 2x zoom as its sole backup. The Samsung Galaxy S24<\/a> family all carry an optical zoom camera of some description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019m even glad of the rumors that suggest the next-generation iPhone SE<\/a> will continue the single-camera tradition, as this means more investment and design resources can be allocated to things like performance and battery life instead of a camera with very limited use cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully, these choices begin to trickle down towards the best cheap phones over the coming years, but until then, it seems I\u2019ll have to keep chasing the highest-performing phones for a secondary camera that I actually want to use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ultra-why bother? The iPhone 16 (Image credit: Future)Pick up any modern phone \u2013 be it one of the best iPhones or best Android phones \u2013 and you\u2019re likely to find a rear panel adorned with two, three, or even four cameras. In most cases, at least one of these cameras will be an ultra-wide lens … Continue reading Nearly every phone has this one annoying hardware feature \u2013 it’s time for phone makers to ditch ultra-wide cameras<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batterymap.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}