The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is one of the most powerful camera phones ever and not just because it includes a 108MP main sensor. You also get two telephoto zoom lenses – one with 3x hybrid optical zoom and one with 10x optical zoom. And it can make a huge difference in what you can capture.
With the S21 Ultra, you can go even further with Samsung’s Space Zoom. The digital zoom reaches 100 times. And there’s a zoom lock that tries to stabilize your shot so the viewfinder doesn’t jump around while you’re shooting.
Meanwhile it is iPhone 12 Pro maxThe most powerful camera phone from Apple has a single telephoto lens with a 2.5x optical zoom and 12x digital zoom. In our Galaxy S21 Ultra versus iPhone 12 Pro max In some cases, the Apple phone gave better picture quality, but it’s hard to ignore how far behind the iPhone’s camera is when zooming.
Road sign
For our first zoom test, we set up the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the iPhone 12 Pro Max over a highway with a view of a fish market and a restaurant. And it was immediately apparent how superior the zoom is on Samsung’s phone.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
The photo above gives you an idea of how far I was from the sign across the street, and below you can see the room zoom at 10x, 30x and 100x.
If you work through the above slides, you will find that the Galaxy S21 Ultra produces an image 10 times sharper than the iPhone 12 Pro Max with 12 times image. The Wooley’s Fish Market text on the building is clearer while there is a lot of noise in the iPhone image.
The zoom camera of the S21 Ultra then presses even further so that you can easily see the text “Any Size Lobsters” on the sign. (A T is missing, but you get it.)
At 100x room zoom, the Galaxy S21 Ultra doesn’t deliver the clearest picture, and it wasn’t that easy to capture. The new zoom-lock function of the S21 Ultra, however, reduces the wobbling. You tap the screen to frame your subject, then press the shutter button.
iPhone 12 Pro max
The iPhone 12 Pro Max takes us across the Autobahn in this case, and I like the warm color profile. However, the overall picture of the Apple phone is quite noisy compared to Samsung’s photo with a similar zoom level. The text on the sign is fuzzy and there is less detail up in the building.
Samsung Galaxy Note 20
I’ve included this picture to give you an idea of how far the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra The 50x zoom is sufficient compared to the 100x zoom of the S21 Ultra. Of course, the Note also offers a much better zoom than the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but does not benefit from the S21 Ultra’s zoom-lock function. That was a little difficult to grasp the first time.
pavilion
Galaxy S21 Ultra
It is not so easy to see at a glance that in this photo there is a pavilion over a half-frozen lake. The fact that the Galaxy S21 Ultra can get us all the way to the shingles on the roof is pretty impressive.
At 10x zoom you can see more details in the ice glazing above the lake and in the pavilion itself. At 30x the image is still pretty sharp, but there is some noise in the shaded areas on the left side of the shot.
Once again, the S21 Ultra’s zoom lock feature helped me take this 100x photo, but the tiles on the roof aren’t that clear. This was taken without a tripod so generally you should use one if you go over 30x.
iPhone 12 Pro max
The iPhone 12 Pro Max 12x digital zoom is pretty disappointing in this case. The pillars on the pavilion are not well defined, and the ice on the water is almost more like a painting than a photo.
Bank
Galaxy S21 Ultra
As I went to the other side of the lake, I turned my attention to a bench over the water, and it can hardly be seen in the distance.
At 30x zoom, the bank is mostly focused on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, and the surrounding grass and lake itself are pretty well defined. The top left of the bench is slightly blown out by the sun, but overall it’s a decent picture.
At 100x space zoom, the bank is a pretty blurry mess, and this was enabled with Zoom Lock on the S21 Ultra. It’s usable, but not something I would share.
iPhone 12 Pro max
The 12x zoom on the iPhone 12 Pro Max looks a little worse than the 30x zoom on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which tells you how far Apple must go to catch up with Samsung on the zoom front.
Mailbox
Galaxy S21 Ultra
For this zoom test, I wanted to see how close I can get to a mailbox number with the Galaxy S21 Ultra to get a clear capture of the number.
At 10x zoom, both the flower and the butterfly in the mailbox look very clear above the number, as does the bark on the tree on the left. And even at 30x, the flower and butterfly stickers are remarkably sharp.
You will only see a clear noise in the picture when we press the mailbox with 100x room zoom. In this case, however, the results look slightly better than other photos taken at the maximum zoom level.
iPhone 12 Pro max
Unfortunately, that’s as far as the iPhone 12 Pro Max, and you’ll find that the road and tree don’t look as detailed as the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The mailbox itself looks pretty good though.
Bottom line
The Galaxy S21 Ultra’s zoom gives you a huge advantage over the iPhone 12 Pro Max’s camera. You simply have a lot more options for capturing when you get 10x zoom photos that look amazing and 30x zoom images that give pretty sharp results. Only when you press the 100x zoom does the image quality fall apart – a situation that you can mitigate with a tripod.
As for the iPhone, rumor has it that the zoom on the iPhone 13 coming out this fall won’t see the leap hoped for and that Apple may wait until 2022 to give us a powerful periscope zoom. I hope this is not true.
