The Pixel 10 proves that everyone wants zoom cams, even if they don’t know it yet

My Android Authority colleague Kamila recently revealed a lot of details about the upcoming Pixel 10 series’ cameras. According to her report and sources, the Google Pixel 10 Pro series will keep the same camera sensor setup as last year’s Pixel 9 Pro phones, but the regular Pixel 10 will see some major changes. Some upgrades with a new telephoto camera, some downgrades with smaller main and ultrawide sensors. If you ask me, though, I think it’s all a net positive because a zoom lens is becoming a necessity nowadays.

When I saw the first leaked Pixel 10 renders, I nearly didn’t believe them. For a few years now, since the Pixel 6 series, Google has differentiated between its regular and Pro phones with the camera setup. Regular gets two lenses (main, ultrawide), and Pro gets three lenses (main, ultrawide, and zoom). It’s been that way for so long that seeing a third camera on the regular Pixel 10 almost felt fake. But with Kamila verifying this with her sources, I think it’s fair to assume that this change is real, and I’m so happy about it.

See, I’ve recommended Pixel phones for many years now to everyone I know. My mom, aunt, husband, best friend, a few other friends, a cousin, and many other people in my entourage grabbed Pixels because of me, because they kept seeing my excellent Pixel photos, got tired of me saying, “It’s the Pixel camera, I tell you!” and decided to get in on the action themselves.

The problem is that not everyone has the budget to splurge for the Pro Pixels to get the best of Google’s camera setup. A few years ago, when the Pixel 6 Pro launched for $899 with a pair of free Bose Headphones 700 — a $399 value — as a pre-order bonus, a few people could justify the splurge and either kept the headphones or sold them to recap some of the upfront money. Later, when Google switched to offering a Pixel Watch with the Pro phones, it was still a decent deal. Now, though? The Pixel 9 Pro launched last year at $999 and the Pro XL at $1,099, both without any real tangible pre-order benefit.

So when my friends or family members coughed at the price of a Pixel Pro, I recommended the regular Pixel. In my head, I thought there wasn’t much of a downgrade to justify the price difference. Yes, I knew that I, personally, couldn’t let go of my zoom lens, but I go to concerts (see the photos below) and sports games. I also travel a lot and I love framing buildings and sceneries from afar; I’m an anomaly. Regular people wouldn’t miss the zoom, I assumed. Oh, how wrong I was.

I was talking to my friend a few months ago, and the subject of the Pixel came up. When I asked her if she was enjoying the cam, I could hear her shrug and hmph through the phone. Why? Bad zoom. She told me she has trouble taking photos of her kid during school recitals and theatre shows. She said she keeps looking at other parents near her with their iPhones and Galaxy phones and noticing they have better cameras and can take nice photos of their children. She knew she’d made a price compromise to get the regular Pixel, but she had still expected more from its cam.

Yikes. This same conversation happened again and again with other people. A neighbor who’d moved from a Galaxy S22 to a Pixel 9 lamented the — admittedly pretty basic — 3x zoom she had on her Samsung phone when taking photos of her kittens. My mom keeps asking my aunt to take photos of things that are far away because she knows the Pixel 6 Pro will do better than her Pixel 7 with zoom. My best friend told me she was jealous of my Pixel 9 Pro XL photos because I could zoom in and avoid crowds while we were sightseeing together. And so on.

So, I stopped recommending the regular Pixel to people when they ask me about it because I know that sooner or later, even if they don’t think they need zoom, they will envy zoom.

It’s not one, not two, but many conversations over the last year that have convinced me that a zoom lens is no longer regarded as a luxury — at least in the circle of people I know. It’s a feature people expect, a feature they want.

Some have kids, some have pets, some travel, some have bad eyesight, some attend concerts and festivals, others go to sports games, and everyone now sees someone in their immediate surroundings pull out a high-end Pixel, iPhone, Samsung, Xiaomi, or any other great camera phone, and take an excellent photo from afar. Unlike us who follow the mobile industry up close, none of them know that zoom lenses have been restricted to expensive flagships and that you have to pay to get them; few of them even know that zoom requires a separate camera module!

I think we’re at a point where flagship phones have democratized telephoto cameras so much that everyone just assumes their own camera sucks in comparison if it can’t zoom properly. There’s no point in explaining the physics of Super Res Zoom on a 1x sensor versus using a native 5x optical telephoto sensor. One sucks, one doesn’t, and that’s all that most people will understand.

This brings me back to the regular Pixel 10 leak. I think Google came to this same conclusion, and I’m glad it did it now instead of waiting a few more years when telephoto became the norm on cheaper phones.

According to our leak, the Pixel 10 will have the same Samsung 3J1 11MP sensor as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. We don’t know the zoom level yet, but odds are Google has copied the entire module over, not just the sensor, so it’ll be the same 5x as the Fold. Based on my personal experience with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, that camera setup will do very well at 5x, decent at 10x, and then just stagger to 20x. Not a Pro Pixel quality level, but very, very workable for most situations I find myself in.

A proper optical 5x zoom will beat any Super Res Zoom and digital cropping from any 1x camera lens. And, based on the many conversations I’ve had in recent months, I’d argue that the benefits of adding a proper zoom will far outweigh the potential loss of a bit of quality due to the downgraded smaller main and ultrawide sensor. People won’t notice a slightly more noisy photo at night, but they will notice a good zoom lens. Besides, there are always software adjustments and AI magic to make the downgrade less important. And if sacrificing a bit of quality on some photos is the price to pay to keep the final bill of material and public price unchanged, then so be it.

I think Google is making the right move here. Providing a well-rounded photography experience is better than putting all of the camera’s weight on two aspects of photography (regular and ultrawide photos) and completely neglecting the third. People with kids, pets, or bad eyesight, and those who travel or attend concerts, parades, sports games, or big shows will appreciate it a lot.

Plus, democratizing telephoto lenses further and making them the norm will put the onus on Samsung and Apple to catch up and provide a similar experience at that price tag, and I doubt they’ll be able to match the regular Pixel 10 soon.