As I was covering the iPhone announcement earlier this week, there was a moment in Apple's presentation that made me double-take. Describing the new iPhone Air, the company said: "What might appear to be a single camera is actually our new, powerful, 48 megapixel fusion camera system, which works like multiple advanced cameras in one.
" It continued on to mention the phone's "2x telephoto," later calling it an "optical quality lens. "
Reader: the iPhone Air has one camera. (And it's not new, by the way; it's the same main camera from the standard iPhone 16 and 17). The camera app may present you with a 2x option, but it will be using the exact same optics. It "might appear to be a single camera" because it literally just is.
The Air's "2x telephoto" is really just a crop.
Image: Apple
The company pulls the same trick for the regular iPhone 17, calling its main lens "two cameras in one," and takes it even further with the iPhone 17 Pro. That phone has three cameras – a 13mm equiv. "0. 5x" ultra-wide, 24mm equiv. "1x" main and 100mm equiv. "4x" telephoto which is an impressive amount to fit in such a small device. Yet Apple claims the phone is capable of "up to 8x optical-quality zoom," and that carrying it is "like having 8 pro lenses in your pocket. "*
The iPhone 17 Pro's eight camera modes (produced by its three cameras).
Image: Apple
It isn't, and these additional options are not "optical quality," an essentially meaningless phrase meant to evoke the idea of a lens capable of actually zooming in. In reality, it's a crop. Your phone is punching in on the pixels in the center of the sensor, only using a quarter of its resolution to capture the scene.
The phone may be processing it differently than it would a straight digital zoom, but at the heart of it, that is all these "optical zoom" modes are. It's also worth noting that, because of the sensor's Quad Bayer design, that center crop won't necessarily have the detail you might expect from a 12MP image taken on a standard Bayer sensor.
The "optical zoom" phrasing is all over Apple's website, including in the tool that lets you compare between models, which doesn't distinguish between the actual lenses and the crops.
Also, while I'm griping, this comparison tool may be one of the most obnoxious pieces of web design I've come across in a while.
This isn't a new trick by any means; Apple has been pretending that cropping is the same as optics for a while now, but that doesn't really make it better. People are still getting confused by it, likely in part because the tech press routinely parrots the "optical quality" phrasing without explaining what's actually happening under the hood.
While Apple's presentation was particularly egregious, it's far from the only phone manufacturer participating in this marketing sleight of hand. Describing the Pixel 10 Pro's capabilities, Google writes that the phone has "optical quality at 0. 5x, 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x," despite it physically only having three cameras (the 2x and 10x modes are center crops).
Another example of "optical quality. "
Samsung similarly boasts that the S25 has a 50MP wide-angle camera with "2x optical quality zoom," though it at least includes a footnote saying "Optical quality zoom is enabled by the Adaptive Pixel sensor. 3x distance is optical zoom. 2x distance is optical quality zoom. " That could tip off attentive readers that there are some liberties being taken, but telling the truth in the footnotes isn't the same as being honest.
While these companies are (generally) careful to modify "optical" with "quality," I'd argue this is still misleading, though I'm sure they all have some convoluted reasoning as to why they call the crop modes that**. While consumers probably aren't buying phones thinking they have more cameras than they actually do, Apple & co's. marketing may trick them into thinking they're not giving up by pressing the button to punch in.
You are giving up something for that extra reach, no matter how hard manufacturers try to make you believe otherwise
But, to put it plainly: they are. All the computational tricks in the world won't make an image taken using a quarter of the sensor the same quality as one taken with the entirety of that same sensor. You are giving up something for that extra reach, no matter how hard the phone companies try to make you believe otherwise.
In all honesty, I don't expect the phone companies to stop using this kind of language, especially if thin phones with fewer cameras continue to be en vogue. What I can hope is that photography enthusiasts and the tech press will stop regurgitating their misleading labels, and instead start educating people on how the different modes actually work.
* - Apple's math: three real, physical lenses (ultra-wide, wide, telephoto), plus two main camera crops to emulate a 28 or 35mm focal length, the "2x" center crop of the main camera and "8x" center crop of the telephoto camera and the ultra-wide's macro mode equals eight options.
** - In its presentation, Apple says the crop modes have their own "dedicated image pipelines. " This is almost certainly technically correct, the most annoying kind of correct
. dpreview.com2025-9-12 16:00
