Don't worry about the Galaxy S27 Ultra's main camera. Worry about its zoom

The Galaxy S27 Ultra is the 2027 kickoff that mobile fans are expecting to deal them a nice chunk of dopamine. The majority of you probably won't buy it (and neither would I), but keeping up with the biggest players is mandatory.

It's well over half a year until this bad boy, which will surely land in the best Android phones list, materializes. That may seem like a long period of time, but this can never stop us from discussing what's on the horizon… or still below it.

Moreover, rumors about the S27 Ultra have started to pour in. One or two of those may trigger you.

The new main camera sensor situation

Per the latest news, the Galaxy S27 Ultra might miss out on Samsung’s most advanced camera tech.

It's not some new lens or software algorithm, but a sensor. To summarize the article above, Sammy's next champion might come with an ISOCELL HP6 sensor instead of the rumored ISOCELL HPA sensor.

Now, both sensors offer a full resolution of 200 MP. Thanks to the pixel binning technology, you can get 24 MP or 12 MP photos for results by combining data from multiple physical pixels into a single "superpixel".

The main difference between those (per current rumors) is that the HP6 variant will offer a physical size of 1/1.3 inches, while the HPA might be a larger 1/1.12-inch one. As a rule of thumb, you want a bigger sensor since those capture more light and produce finer shots.

What's more, the HPA might come with LOFIC tech, which stands for Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor. This means you're supposed to get much better results in terms of dynamic range so your photos don't come with clipped (overblown) highlights.

Wait, who'll get the HPA sensor then?!

The S27 Ultra sounds like the perfect candidate for the high-end ISOCELL HPA, right? Yeah, but this sensor might debut on the Oppo Find X10 Ultra (if Samsung and Oppo agree on it), which leaves the S27 Ultra with the HP6.

It's tempting to mourn this, but Samsung has bigger fish to fry before dealing with its main cam dramas.

Why? Well, because the main cam on recent Ultra models by Sammy are all great anyway. There are things higher on the priority list, if you ask me.

Upgrade the zoom sensor!

Because telephoto is the area where the real flagship wars are fought today.

Ultra-wide cameras are nice to have, sure, but people rarely obsess over them. Nobody buys a $1,500 phone because its ultra-wide lens captures an extra half a stop of dynamic range.

Zoom cameras, however, are different. They change how you shoot concerts, pets, sports, food, portraits and travel photos. A great telephoto camera lets you capture moments you literally can't physically walk closer to.

Rivals know that

That's why we're now seeing absolutely absurd telephoto hardware on devices like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra (pictured above). A 1/1.28-inch sensor behind a 3x zoom lens is close to insanity by smartphone standards. Meanwhile, Samsung relies on a tiny 1/3.94-inch sensor for its 3x telephoto unit on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, for example.

OK, Samsung's image processing is great. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, S25 Ultra and the S26 Ultra all deliver excellent main camera performance. Their primary shooters are versatile, reliable and capable of producing gorgeous shots in almost any scenario.

Samsung's computational photography pipeline is among the industry's best, but software can only stretch reality so far.

Physics again

At some point, physics steps in and ruins the party. Tiny telephoto sensors simply gather less light, struggle more indoors and lose fine detail much faster compared to the huge zoom sensors that Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are now experimenting with.

Samsung doesn't need to panic about its main camera. That's already elite-tier hardware, but I hope they focus on the zoom game.

If Samsung truly wants to compete with the exotic Android monsters coming out of China over the next few years, it has to stop treating telephoto cameras like secondary add-ons.

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