Sometimes it feels like the smartphone industry quietly shifted the battleground from megapixels and processors to something much more interesting: telephoto reach. And that’s where things get uneven fast. Apple’s newest iPhone 17 Pro Max finally gives users true 8x optical zoom, not hybrid trickery or computational illusions — actual glass doing actual optical work. For Apple, that’s a milestone; they spent years stuck at 2x and pretending algorithms were enough. But even at 8x, there’s this subtle feeling of not quite crossing the finish line. It gets close to that cinematic distance storytelling… but not all the way to where things get truly transformative.
On the other side, Samsung is in a strangely backward position. The Galaxy S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra gave us real 10x optical zoom, and users didn’t just appreciate it, they built shooting habits around it. Wildlife, concerts, architectural details, candid street shots from a comfortable distance — that focal length made a phone feel less like a smartphone and more like a tiny telephoto rig in your pocket. But instead of pushing forward, Samsung stepped back. The S24 Ultra and now the S25 Ultra dropped down to 5x optical zoom, leaning heavily on computational scaling and sensor crop. Yes, it works, and yes, the results can be good — but it’s not the same. The visual signature of a true long lens can’t be faked: depth compression, background spacing, and fine detail at long distances all look different when the glass is really doing the work.
Meanwhile, in the Chinese flagship arena, 10x optical zoom never disappeared — it basically became standard in photography-focused models. Huawei, vivo, and Xiaomi treat long telephoto as a serious creative tool, not a marketing bullet point. Their tele modules sit behind large sensors, with strong optical stabilization and carefully designed lens stacks that produce images with dramatic compression and clean separation between subject and background. Add collaborations like Leica and Zeiss, variable apertures on some models, and aggressive but often beautiful color science, and you end up with phones that feel like they were built for people who actually think like photographers, not just casual snappers.
That’s where the tension really shows. Many users look at sample photos from these Chinese flagships — the vivo X-series portraits, Xiaomi Ultra tele shots, Huawei’s night zoom images — and think, “This is exactly the kind of reach and look I want from my phone.” But then reality kicks in: privacy concerns, worries about data access, questions about government influence, uncertainty over how and where data is handled, plus app-store restrictions and geopolitical pressure in many regions. Fair or not, there is a widespread perception that you simply can’t trust the security of Chinese smartphone ecosystems at the same level as Apple’s iOS or Samsung’s Knox-based Android builds. For a lot of people, that’s a hard line they won’t cross.
This is precisely where Apple and Samsung are missing an opportunity. There is a clear gap in the market for a phone that combines the long-reach photographic ambition of a vivo or Huawei with the security, transparency, and long-term support of a mainstream Western ecosystem. Apple could have gone all the way to 10x optical and owned that space for creators who care about both image quality and privacy. Samsung could have kept its 10x module and refined it further instead of walking it back to 5x and relying on computational tricks. Instead, the two biggest global brands are playing it conservative at exactly the moment when serious mobile photographers want more.
Will they do something about it? They probably will have to. The demand isn’t theoretical — it shows up in how people travel, shoot concerts, document urban life, and compare phones online. Long telephoto isn’t a gimmick; it enables a different way of seeing. If Apple ships a true 10x optical module in a future Pro Max and pairs it with their restrained color science, or if Samsung brings back a dedicated long tele lens on top of a flexible mid-tele, a lot of users who are currently eyeing Chinese camera phones from a distance would jump instantly. They don’t want to choose between great photos and great security. They want both.
Right now, though, we’re stuck in this odd split world: the most advanced long-zoom camera phones are the ones many users don’t fully trust with their personal data, while the brands that are trusted most are shipping safer, more conservative telephoto setups. It feels like we’re one hardware decision away from the perfect device — the zoom power of a Chinese photo flagship combined with the security posture of Apple or Samsung — but we’re not there yet. Until one of the big two commits to true 10x optical again, Chinese photography phones will keep holding the telephoto crown, and the rest of us will keep waiting for the moment when security and serious zoom finally live in the same flagship.
