OnePlus has allegedly been caught exaggerating the 3x optical zoom on its latest flagship, the OnePlus 7 Pro, which was proven to be closer to a 2.2x zoom. Android Police reports that the triple camera set up actually crops the 2.2x zoom to bring it to the three-fold zoom promised in the product specs, though that means the focal length is not the same.
A couple of users have discovered that the OnePlus 7 Pro has a wider field of view in portrait mode than in 3X zoom mode. The smartphone uses only the telephoto lens to shoot in portrait mode. So if it truly does 3X optical zoom, there shouldn’t be any difference in the field of view for both modes. You can see the effect in real time over here.
The OnePlus 7 Pro telephoto camera is a 13MP sensor (SK53M5). But OnePlus advertises the telephoto camera as offering 8MP 3x optical zoom. In other words, OnePlus is using the sensor’s native 2.2x zoom factor for portraits but cropping the sensor’s output for 3x zoom. In a statement to Android Central, the company steered clear of calling it “3x optical zoom,” saying it achieves 3x zoom with “no digital zoom or loss of detail.”
“The OnePlus 7 Pro has 3x zoom with no digital zoom or loss of detail. The telephoto camera serves two main purposes: 3x zoom and portrait mode photography. It will switch the field of view depending on the camera mode. With 3x zoom, the telephoto camera delivers the advertised lossless 8 megapixels images. Portrait mode utilizes all 13 megapixels from the sensor in the telephoto camera. ”
So what’s going on here? According to Digital Camera World, OnePlus appears to be using a “composite of image data” from the 48MP sensor and the optical zoom lens to create its digital shots. We have no way to test this at the moment, but it seems fairly accurate. This sets it apart from technologies like Hybrid Zoom, which use superresolution and upscaling techniques that are very different from OnePlus’ crop.
The results are clearly pretty good, even Dx0mark agrees, but it’s debatable whether OnePlus should be advertising the phone with 3x optical zoom or a 3x telephoto camera. Huawei generally avoids this for its phones, promoting the native zoom factor (3x or 5x) and using “hybrid zoom” branding otherwise.
It is worth pointing out that this isn’t the first time OnePlus has messed up its camera claims. The OnePlus 5 was initially perceived to be doing 2X optical zoom but it was later clarified that the device was doing 1.6X optical zoom and the remaining 0.4X was done through smart capture multi-frame technology.
OnePlus is adamant that there’s no dishonesty on its part and that the 3x zoom provides full lossless quality. The quality part is true — there’s no digital zoom or quality degradation going on. Do you think OnePlus is still able to claim 3X Optical Zoom because it has no loss of detail? Let us know in the comments below.
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