I took the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge to a concert to see if telephoto lenses are overrated

Chances are, you've seen a stunning concert video on a social media app like TikTok or Instagram. One that looks like the person recording is right next to your favorite artist or band, except they're really in the upper decks. The unsung hero making all these impressive shots and recordings possible is the modern telephoto lens on the best smartphones.

Telephoto lenses utilize specialized camera hardware to provide optical zoom — in other words, they can zoom in without compromising image quality. A more common form of smartphone zoom is digital zoom, which is lossy. It's like when you zoom into a photo you've already taken and it starts to get grainy and noisy. For this reason, telephoto lenses are preferred, but they aren't ubiquitous on all smartphones yet.

I used a phone with a telephoto lens for two years before switching to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, which doesn't include one for the sake of thinness. After testing phones like the iPhone 16 Pro, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Samsung Galaxy S25 — all of which included telephoto cameras — I expected to miss it a lot. To find out just how much, I took my Galaxy S25 Edge to a concert, and here's how it went.

The Galaxy S25 Edge has passable zoom capabilities... to a point

I took the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge to a few events at MetLife Stadium, including a concert and a FIFA Club World Cup match. Usually, I'd have a phone with a telephoto lens with me, but I only carried the Galaxy S25 Edge for these trips. That left the smartphone's main 200MP sensor and secondary 12MP ultrawide as my only options for capturing content while out and about.

As it turns out, some of the criticism about the Galaxy S25 Edge not having a telephoto camera is a bit overblown. The massive 200MP, f/1.7 main camera sensor enables Samsung to utilize a handy trick called sensor crop. Essentially, Samsung can use only part of the large 200MP sensor to capture a close-up version of the photo without sacrificing quality.

At smaller zoom lengths, like 2x or 4x zoom, you should get a high-quality image. Since 2x zoom uses only in-sensor crop, which is lossless, that means you get great shots comparable to a telephoto lens when using it. In the gallery below, the first image is captured at 1x zoom, and the second was taken with 2x zoom.

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As you can see, there is no noticeable quality loss between the two photos. However, this is only applicable at really low zoom lengths. It's not as useful for concerts for that reason, because anything beyond 2x zoom is digital with AI enhancements. The results can be hit or miss.

As you can see below, there's a big dropoff between the first photo (1x zoom) and the second photo (~10x zoom). The quality loss is massive, granted, I was pretty far away. Longer shots captured with digital zoom on the Galaxy S25 Edge are still passable, but fall short at getting all of the finer details right.

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There isn't enough detail to even tell what exactly I was capturing in the second photo, which was entirely relying on digital zoom and AI enhancements. In reality, it was the DJ working under the clear tent near the center of the frame. The digital zoom quality just wasn't good enough at 10x zoom or higher for that to be clear.

In this instance, I'd probably prefer a phone with a telephoto camera, like the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. While it maxes out at 5x optical zoom, the benefits would've also been prevalent at longer zoom lengths.

How much better are phones with telephoto cameras?

In case you're curious about how much better a phone with a telephoto lens is at capturing zoom shots, let's take a look at camera samples from my iPhone 16 Pro. This is the phone that the Galaxy S25 Edge replaces in my everyday carry, and it has a telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom. Unsurprisingly, the zoom shots from my iPhone 16 Pro turned out better, despite the fact that I was much higher up.

They aren't winning any awards and certainly look grainy in some places, but you can tell exactly who's performing and what's going on. This is true even though I zoomed in far beyond the iPhone's 5x optical zoom capabilities to grab shots of Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and DJ Mustard.

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For perspective, I was sitting in the 200 level of MetLife Stadium when I took photos with the Galaxy S25 Edge. Meanwhile, the photos you're seeing from the iPhone 16 Pro were shot from the second-to-last row of the 400 level of State Farm Stadium. If you haven't been to these venues, that's fine; all you need to know is that I was way higher and photos still turned out sharper with the iPhone and its telephoto lens.

I wouldn't put zoom shots taken at 10x zoom or greater on my wall from either camera, but there's no doubt that the telephoto lens on the iPhone 16 Pro improved concert photo quality. The same would be true with a comparable Android phone like the Pixel 9 Pro XL or Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Why I didn't feel lost without a telephoto camera

At the end of the day, these camera tests led me to a surprising conclusion — I can live without a dedicated telephoto lens if a phone's main camera is good enough. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge's zoom shots left a bit to be desired, but I got some of my favorite concert photos ever out of the 200MP main sensor. That includes this low-light shot below, featuring a bunch of lights and bright fireworks in motion.

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For this reason, I wouldn't say that telephoto lenses are essential for flagships in 2025. There are other reasons I'd be willing to sacrifice one, like in favor of a more compact design or a better main camera. I also wouldn't say they're overrated, either. Telephoto lenses are really outstanding additions to the best camera phones, and we shouldn't take them for granted.

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