God, comparing smartphone cameras these days is tough. I'd argue that the overall experience and ecosystem, as well as personal preference are almost more impactful than the pure image quality at this point (at least at the high end of the market), and you'll see that as we go in this comparison.

But I was curious about zoom with the new iPhone 17 Pro, and I happen to have last year's iPhone 16 Pro and this year's flagship Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra in hand, so let's run to the forest and take some pics.

Oh, and this post will be best viewed on a laptop or iPad. I bet all of these look the same on a phone screen.

1x (just for fun)

The first pic I took was using the standard "1x" lens on each phone. I used the factory standard settings for each (although the amber photographic style is enabled on the iPhones). This meant the iPhones output 24MP images and the Galaxy output a 12MP image. You can bump the iPhones up to 48MP if you want, and the Ultra to 50MP or 200MP, but we're going with the standard modes across the board.

At a glance, there's no difference of note outside of some color differences, so let's do the thing where we zoom in a ton on the image to find the differences.

1x at 10x crop

There's still not a lot between then, but you can see there is more retained detail in the iPhone shots, which makes sense given their higher output resolution..

However, the Ultra has a 200MP sensor, and you can take a shot with that full resolution, so let's see how that compares.

24MP vs 200MP

Honestly, even zooming in all the way, it's unclear to me where the extra detail is here. Maybe other shots show it off better, but I've taken a few of these 200MP shots and there's not much to it in my book. Really goes to show that pure resolution can only get you so far.

5x zoom

5x

5x is where things get a little interesting, as the 16 Pro and Ultra each have 5x lenses, but the 17 Pro only has a 4x lens. Then again, the 17 Pro has a 48MP sensor that bins down to 24MP, so maybe it'll gain detail, even when going a bit past its native 4x zoom. We can't tell much right away, so let's zoom in a bunch on this shot as well.

5x at 10x crop

Again, we're splitting hairs here, but to me, I actually find the iPhone 16 Pro to look the best here. There's a softness to the 17 Pro image that's not bad, but it's simply not as clear, and the Ultra is more washed out and while the details are there, it's over-sharpened to my eye. I gotta be honest, I expected the 17 Pro to make up for its lesser zoom with more resolution, but in this test at least, it actually didn't.

10x zoom

10x

None of these phones have a 10x lens, but let's see what they do when you go to 10x using the longest lens on each camera? This is pushing them all past their natural limits. As a reminder:

  • iPhone 17 Pro has a 48MP 4x telephoto lens that bins down to 24MP (but 12MP when zooming past 4x)
  • iPhone 16 Pro has a 12MP 5x telephoto lens that bins down to 12MP
  • Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 50MP telephoto lens that bins down to 12MP

Again, looking at these doesn't tell you much, but we can zoom in on the 10x zoom and see something.

10x at 10x crop

Well now the Ultra looks to have the most detail to me and the iPhones look equally soft by comparison.

A few more comparisons

Indoor low light 10x zoom (detail crop)

Let's compare a few more shots. The above image is indoors in medium to low light, and doing a 10x zoom in the camera app. In this case, the iPhone 16 Pro is remarkably worse than the other two, which I suspect has to do with the lighting, and maybe it fell back to the main lens since it could capture more light and we're simply zooming in a ton? Regardless, I think the 17 Pro and Ultra are neck and neck here, with the Ultra getting the edge…I think…it's so close.

Either way, this shows the benefit of having the best light-gathering sensors possible on your telephoto lenses, as phones will fall back to the main lens in lower light situations, negating all the benefits of having a real telephoto lens on the phone.

Max resolution on the 1x lens (detail crop)

Next, I wanted to go back to the max resolution each camera could do, so I set up a Batman Lego set I'm working on and took a photo at the max resolution each camera would do. The image above is massively cropped to see a fine detail, and outside of the major color temperature difference, they look pretty similar, although I'd say the iPhone has more details and the Ultra has smoothed over more things. For example, the imperfections in the Arkham Asylum text are real, and the Ultra buffs them out, just like the tiny flecks of dust on Harley's hammer.

My takeaway

I'd say that in most conditions for most people, the 4x telephoto lens on the new iPhone 17 Pro doesn't represent a huge upgrade over last year's phone. This isn't a knock on the new iPhone, it's been this way for years, and these incremental upgrades compound over time into a camera system that's worlds better if you have the patience to wait a few years between upgrades.

That said, I think the second to last photo of the tree Lego set reveals the benefit of the 56% larger telephoto camera sensor in the 17 Pro. That's going to allow a lot more light to come through, meaning it can work in lower light situations than previous iPhones. Maybe that's not going to help you a ton in bright, daytime shots, but it will move the needle at a school play or concert where it's probably pretty dim in the auditorium. We saw in my sample shot what happens when it tries to crop the 1x sensor down to "8x" and it's not pretty, so avoiding that is a big deal for some.

Compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it seems like a bit of a toss up on the telephoto front depending on exactly what photo you've taken and in what circumstances you took it. The clarity of shots 5x and beyond were similar in some cases and better in others.

Honestly, when it comes to telephoto shots, both Apple's and Samsung's flagship phones are pretty good. They both have high resolution sensors of the same physical size in their 4x/5x lenses, meaning it's not a huge surprise to see similar results from each. Right now, if I needed to take a photo of something far away, I'd be just as happy having either of these phones with me.