TL;DR The Google Pixel 10 Pro phones now have a 10x zoom button in the camera app.
This is a long-overdue addition as Pixel Pro phones are all capable of good-quality 10x shots.
This also means you no longer have to rely on the Pixel Camera app’s finicky zoom slider to get to 10x.
Google’s Pixel Pro phones all have high-resolution 5x periscope cameras, enabling 10x shots at a lossless resolution. This capability makes these devices stand out among the best camera phones on the market. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t make it easy to quickly access this zoom level, as it doesn’t offer a 10x button in the camera app.
Fortunately, we discovered that the Pixel 10 Pro series now offers a 10x zoom button in the camera app viewfinder. This is a long-overdue addition, coming over six months after colleague Rita El-Khoury criticized this omission. Check out our image below from a demo unit at the Made By Google event.
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
Phones like the Pixel 7 Pro and newer Pro phones have 48MP 5x periscope cameras, and Google simply crops the center 12MP to produce a 10x shot. In other words, this is the furthest you can go with the periscope camera without resorting to hybrid zoom and other software-based techniques. This approach means you can often take good-quality 10x snaps in daytime conditions.
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However, the lack of a 10x zoom button felt like a missed opportunity to showcase the phones’ long-range camera performance. Instead, Pixel owners had to resort to using the zoom slider, which I personally found extremely finicky and sensitive. Google’s zoom slider doesn’t snap to 10x, often landing on arbitrary figures like 10.5x or 9.8x. These arbitrary zoom ranges are generally worse than 10x, as they often require additional software tricks (e.g., super-resolution and image fusion) that can introduce undesirable artifacts.
Rita and I aren’t the only Pixel owners looking forward to a 10x zoom button, though. In a December 2024 poll, just over 70% of surveyed Android Authority readers said they wanted a 10x button in the Pixel Camera app. So this is clearly something many Pixel owners will be happy to see.
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