The Galaxy S24 Ultra could see a big upgrade to its telephoto camera

The Galaxy S23 series has been one of our favorite camera flagships in recent times, with all three phones having a clear-cut purpose. But we’re halfway through the year now, which means we can look forward to seeing how Samsung decides to take things ahead with the Galaxy S24 series. Rumors have now emerged that we could be looking at some impressive camera upgrades on the S24 Ultra, potentially marking it as an even better choice than what we currently have with the S23 Ultra.

According to Ice Universe, the Galaxy S24 Ultra will feature a 50MP 3x telephoto camera. Ice Universe is a leaker from China known for leaks and critiques of Samsung devices.

With this disclaimer out of the way, let’s dissect the leak! This is the third leak around the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s telephoto camera, with a previous leak suggesting that the telephoto could be swapped to a 5x optical zoom and another one indicating that it would see no change.

We need to look at the Galaxy S23 Ultra and some recent competition to understand why this would be a good upgrade to the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 10MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. In comparison, competitors like the Xiaomi 13 Pro have a 50MP telephoto camera for a 3.2x optical zoom. Even the OnePlus 11 has a 32MP 2x optical zoom telephoto camera.

While megapixels aren’t the sole metric for judging the quality of a camera, other metrics on Samsung’s secondary cameras have lagged behind the competition. Samsung has been in the megapixel race for only its primary sensor, while the other sensors haven’t received as much attention.

Some users, like me, believe that a good telephoto camera is more important than an excellent ultrawide camera, especially since it helps capture portraits of people. With this leak, we can now look forward to upgrades to the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s telephoto camera too.