Huawei looks like it’s bringing back something most smartphone brands have quietly moved away from: true long-range optical zoom. Fresh leaks surrounding the upcoming Mate 90 Pro Max suggest the phone could feature a dedicated 10x optical periscope camera, alongside a second telephoto lens.
If accurate, it would mark a pretty significant shift at a time when many Android flagships are leaning more heavily on high-resolution sensors and digital cropping instead of native long-range optics. For context, the Mate 80 Pro Max already features a fairly capable dual-telephoto setup, combining a 50MP periscope camera with 4x optical zoom and a second 50MP periscope lens offering 6.2x optical zoom.
The leak comes not too long after Oppo showed what a modern 10x setup can do with the Find X9 Ultra. That phone uses a 50MP sensor paired with a 230mm-equivalent periscope lens and a complex prism arrangement, allowing it to maintain surprisingly good detail even at higher zoom levels. Oppo also pushed the idea of “lossless” 20x zoom through sensor cropping.
Huawei seems to be taking a somewhat similar direction. The Mate 90 Pro Max is rumored to pair the 10x periscope camera with a large 1-inch-type main sensor and Huawei’s XMAGE imaging system.
Exact details about the telephoto hardware are still unclear, but Huawei has experience in this area. The P40 Pro+ from 2020 was one of the first phones to offer proper 10x optical zoom in a relatively compact body, using a folded light-path design to make it work. In a way, the upcoming Mate series could be seen as Huawei revisiting that idea with newer hardware and smarter image processing.
The wider Android market has largely shifted away from this approach. Samsung, for instance, brought back 10x optical zoom on the Galaxy S21 Ultra using a dual fixed-focus telephoto setup, matching the zoom range of the experimental Galaxy S4 Zoom from 2013. However, the company later moved to a 5x optical zoom setup on the Galaxy S24 Ultra to accommodate a larger 50MP sensor.
Huawei’s current Pura 90 Pro Max already pushes zoom pretty far with its 200MP telephoto, especially for video at higher magnification levels. The Mate 90 Pro Max is expected to build further on that foundation, pairing a larger sensor inside a 10x periscope module with AI-powered image enhancement.
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(Source: Smart Pikachu on Weibo)
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