Why Samsung is the most restrictive brand in smartphone cameras

As a long-time Samsung fan, I have to admit something that frustrates me every year: Samsung is the most limiting brand when it comes to offering its best camera experience to consumers.

Samsung’s Galaxy S Ultra phones are beasts. You get not just one but two zoom lenses—one for short-range and one for long-range—along with high-resolution sensors. Starting with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung even bumped the ultrawide sensor to 50MP, leaving behind the old 12MP standard. That makes the Ultra line one of the most versatile mobile cameras out there.

But here’s the catch: no other Samsung phone offers this. If you want the absolute best camera package, you’re forced into buying a Galaxy S Ultra.

Apple used to play this game too. When it finally introduced a 5x zoom lens after years of maxing out at 3x, it kept it exclusive to the iPhone Pro Max for two years. But with the iPhone 16 series, both the Pro and Pro Max got the same zoom hardware, and Apple has kept that up with the iPhone 17 generation. Consumers now have a choice of two iPhone models with the company’s best camera setup.

Google takes it even further. Whether you buy a Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, or even the foldable Pixel 10 Pro Fold, you get a 5x periscope zoom camera. Sure, the base Pixel 10 might deliver lower-quality results compared to its pricier siblings, but the hardware is there, and it’s still more powerful than what Samsung offers on anything but the Ultra.

What makes this even worse is Samsung’s treatment of its Galaxy Z Fold series. This is the company’s most expensive smartphone lineup, and yet, seven generations in, it’s still stuck with a mere 3x zoom camera. That’s the same level of zoom you’ll find on a Galaxy S FE model that costs hundreds of dollars less.

And we’re not even talking about a high-resolution sensor like the 64MP 3x periscope telephoto on some Chinese foldables. It’s a plain old 12MP shooter that doesn't have enough megapixels to make digital zoom a viable solution for magnification past around 5x. The same goes for the Fold's ultrawide camera.

Samsung has a habit of keeping its best features locked to a single model. Take displays, for example: the anti-reflective Gorilla Armor glass debuted on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but Samsung didn’t bring it to the rest of the S24 lineup. The non-Ultra Galaxy S25 models don't have it either.

Apple, on the other hand, has equipped all iPhone 17 models with an anti-reflective coating, not just the most expensive one. And while Google has put a 5x zoom camera on every Pixel 10 variant, Samsung continues to reserve its most advanced hardware exclusively for the Ultra.

If the rumors are true, Samsung won’t change this with the Galaxy S26 series. But there’s still time for the company to fix things with the Galaxy Z Fold 8. I don’t expect change overnight, but I do hope Samsung makes it happen sooner rather than later.