Realme takes page out of Samsung’s playbook for Ultra phone

Samsung’s latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, offers one of the best telephoto shots among all the high-end phones on the market, thanks to a 50MP camera with 5x optical zoom. It is the same sensor that we saw on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

However, before advancing to this setup, the South Korean tech giant used a 10MP sensor with 10x optical zoom (till the Galaxy S23 Ultra). Well, Realme is just catching up to Samsung’s periscope camera setup that it left behind two years ago.

Realme Ultra to have a periscope camera with 10x optical zoom

Realme is soon going to launch a new flagship phone, the Realme Ultra. The brand has started teasing the features of the device. One of the teasers reveals that the phone will have a periscope camera with 10x optical zoom, the same setup as the Galaxy S23 Ultra from 2023.

On paper, the Realme Ultra’s periscope camera with 10x optical zoom looks better than the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s periscope camera with 5x optical zoom. However, in real life, most people use 5x zoom more than 10x zoom. At that zoom level, the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers a better picture than the Galaxy S23 Ultra because the former has a camera with 5x optical zoom and the latter doesn't.

Even at 10x zoom, the Galaxy S25 Ultra puts out equally good or better images, using its periscope camera with 5x optical zoom in conjunction with 2x digital zoom, than the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which has a camera with dedicated 10x optical zoom. That’s because the camera on this year's model has 5 times higher resolution than the camera on Samsung's flagship from two years ago.

So, at the end of the day, the Galaxy S25 Ultra not only offers better images at 5x zoom than the Galaxy S23 Ultra (or phones featuring a periscope camera 10x optical zoom) but also equally good or better pictures at 10x zoom despite having a camera with lower optical zoom level.

That’s also why Apple has used a similar camera setup on its latest flagship smartphones, the iPhone 16 Pro Max. However, the Chinese brands are still sticking with 10x optical zoom. It will be interesting to see how Realme Ultra competes with Samsung’s phones.

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