The 100x Zoom Showdown Nobody Expected

The most revealing smartphone camera test of 2025 didn’t happen in a controlled lab. It happened at the Grand Canyon, spontaneously, when a ZDNET reviewer on a Motorola Razr Fold press trip spotted a distant river and reached for their phone.

What started as a casual shot turned into a three-way shootout. The reviewer had the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Google Pixel 10 Pro on hand alongside the Razr Fold, and the decision to pull all three out at maximum zoom produced results that landed like a quiet bombshell for Samsung loyalists.

The Motorola Razr Fold’s Super Res Zoom captures a 100x image and then runs it through computational cleanup that produces a convincing, usable photo. That process — software intelligence compensating for physical optical limits — is the engine driving the entire competitive shift. The Pixel 10 Pro applies the same AI-first philosophy, leaning on Google’s image processing pipeline rather than raw hardware muscle.

Samsung built its Ultra reputation on exactly that hardware muscle. The Galaxy S26 Ultra carries a periscope telephoto lens system designed to win zoom comparisons on spec sheets and in lab conditions. Standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon targeting the same distant subject, the real-world gap between hardware ambition and computational execution became visible.

The conclusion from the test was direct: Samsung has some catching up to do. That verdict carries weight precisely because it came from an unscripted field scenario rather than a curated benchmark. No controlled lighting. No static test charts. Just three phones, one landscape, and a river in the distance.

For consumers, the result reframes what “best zoom camera” actually means. A phone doesn’t need the most sophisticated optical hardware to win a 100x comparison — it needs the smartest software processing the data that hardware captures. Google and Motorola are betting their entire camera strategies on that premise. Samsung, for the first time in years, finds itself defending ground it assumed was locked up.

What ‘Super Res Zoom’ Actually Means — And Why It’s the Real Battleground

When Motorola says the Razr Fold shoots at 100x zoom, the number is only half the story. The phone captures a heavily degraded image at extreme magnification and then uses Super Res Zoom — a computational pipeline — to reconstruct detail that the lens physically cannot capture on its own. The result is a usable photo of a distant river at the Grand Canyon, not because Motorola engineered a better periscope lens, but because its software is doing aggressive reconstruction work after the shutter fires.

Google takes the same approach with the Pixel 10 Pro. Across successive Pixel generations, Google has refined its AI-driven zoom processing to the point where the camera system treats every long-range shot as a reconstruction problem, not a hardware problem. The Pixel pipeline captures multiple frames, aligns them at the sub-pixel level, and synthesizes detail from slight variations between those frames. The lens provides raw material. The AI builds the final image.

This is the part most spec-sheet comparisons miss entirely. Coverage of the 100x zoom race fixates on optical zoom multipliers, megapixel sensors, and aperture figures — metrics that matter at normal shooting distances but increasingly lose relevance at extreme magnification. At 100x, every phone is working beyond what its optics can resolve cleanly. The question stops being “which phone has the better telephoto lens” and starts being “which phone has the better AI to compensate for physics.”

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra carries impressive hardware credentials — a 200-megapixel primary sensor and a dedicated periscope telephoto — yet real-world 100x comparisons have shown it trailing both the Razr Fold and Pixel 10 Pro in output quality. Samsung’s Space Zoom leans heavily on its optical foundation. Google and Motorola have instead invested in teaching their software to manufacture sharpness computationally. That strategic difference is now showing up in actual photographs, and it reframes the entire competition: the camera race is no longer just about what glass you put in the phone.

Samsung’s Hardware Advantage Is No Longer a Safe Moat

Samsung built the Galaxy S26 Ultra around what is genuinely impressive periscope zoom hardware — a dedicated telephoto lens system designed specifically to dominate at extreme focal lengths. On paper, that hardware advantage should translate directly into better 100x images than competitors relying more heavily on software interpolation. The ZDNET field test at the Grand Canyon told a different story.

Both the Google Pixel 10 Pro and the Motorola Razr Fold produced 100x zoom shots that matched or outperformed the S26 Ultra in real-world usability. The Razr Fold’s Super Res Zoom feature processed long-range shots of distant terrain with clarity that stood up to direct comparison. The Pixel 10 Pro, running Google’s computational photography pipeline, delivered similarly competitive results. Samsung, despite owning the optical hardware lead, came away with the weakest output of the three.

This is the core disruption now playing out across the premium smartphone market. AI-powered image processing has matured to the point where it can close — and in some cases erase — the gap that optical hardware once guaranteed. Google and Motorola are not beating Samsung at its own game. They are changing the game entirely, turning software intelligence into a legitimate substitute for glass and sensor engineering.

For consumers, this creates a concrete value problem. The Galaxy S26 Ultra sits at the top of Samsung’s lineup and commands a flagship price premium. Buyers paying that premium have historically received best-in-class camera output as part of the deal. That assumption no longer holds, at least at 100x zoom. Competing devices priced lower are delivering equivalent or superior results using computational methods Samsung has not yet matched.

Samsung’s hardware moat was real. It is narrowing, and the pace of that narrowing is faster than the company’s current software strategy appears equipped to handle.

The Surprise Contender: Why the Motorola Razr Fold’s Win Is a Big Deal

Few people buy a Motorola Razr Fold expecting it to compete with dedicated camera flagships. The device is marketed around its foldable form factor — the compact design, the nostalgic flip aesthetic, the lifestyle appeal. Camera performance is supposed to be a secondary consideration, not a headline feature. That assumption is now wrong.

In ZDNET’s real-world 100x zoom comparison, conducted at the Grand Canyon, the Razr Fold matched or outperformed both the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Google Pixel 10 Pro in long-range photography. The Razr Fold’s Super Res Zoom processed the 100x shots into clean, usable images — the kind of results that previously required dedicated periscope optics and years of hardware refinement from a brand like Samsung.

Motorola has spent most of the last decade as a camera underdog. While Samsung and Apple fought over DXOMark rankings and Google built a reputation on computational photography, Motorola competed primarily on price and value. Its camera systems were considered functional, rarely exceptional. A result like this doesn’t happen by accident — it reflects a deliberate and now-visible investment in computational photography that is producing real output, not just improved spec sheets.

The implications for buyers are direct. Someone choosing a foldable phone no longer has to accept a camera compromise. The Razr Fold proves that a device built around a flexible display can simultaneously deliver zoom performance that puts a $1,300 Samsung Ultra on the defensive. That repositions the entire foldable category and forces a harder question: if the camera gap is closing, what exactly justifies reaching for the Ultra over a phone that does more with its physical design?

The camera hierarchy in Android smartphones is reshuffling. Google has driven that conversation for years through software processing. Motorola is now part of it.

What This Means for Smartphone Buyers Right Now

Shoppers who automatically reach for the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra when they want the best zoom camera need to reconsider that reflex. Real-world testing at locations like the Grand Canyon — where ZDNET directly compared the S26 Ultra, the Google Pixel 10 Pro, and the Motorola Razr Fold — shows Samsung now has catching up to do, not a gap to defend.

The Pixel 10 Pro is the clearest beneficiary of this shift. Google’s computational photography pipeline consistently produces cleaner, more usable 100x images than Samsung’s hardware-first approach, and the Pixel 10 Pro bundles that zoom performance inside Google’s broader AI ecosystem. Buyers who want strong long-range photography and features like live translation, call screening, and deeper Google Assistant integration get everything in one device rather than making a trade-off.

The Motorola Razr Fold introduces a more disruptive variable. Foldable phones have carried a persistent reputation for camera compromise — buyers accepted weaker optics as the price of a flexible form factor. The Razr Fold’s Super Res Zoom breaks that assumption. Its ability to capture and clean up 100x shots competitively against a dedicated slab flagship forces a genuine reassessment. Buyers who want a foldable no longer have to accept inferior zoom performance as a given.

The practical guidance is straightforward. If zoom photography is the priority, test the Pixel 10 Pro and Razr Fold before defaulting to the S26 Ultra. If the foldable form factor appeals but camera quality held you back before, the Razr Fold removes that objection. Samsung still builds premium hardware, but premium hardware alone no longer guarantees the best photo. AI processing now closes — and in some cases erases — the gap that dedicated periscope lenses once made insurmountable.

The Missing Context Most Reviews Skip

Most zoom camera reviews live in a lab. Identical lighting, tripod-mounted phones, subjects at a fixed distance. The Grand Canyon test that pitted the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Google Pixel 10 Pro, and Motorola Razr Fold against each other matters precisely because it didn’t. Variable sunlight, handheld shooting, and subjects at genuinely indeterminate distances — a river carved into a canyon floor — introduce the noise that controlled benchmarks filter out. That noise is where real-world performance actually lives.

The “100x zoom” label compounds the problem. Across these three phones, 100x means three different things. Samsung’s Space Zoom combines a high-resolution optical telephoto sensor with digital extension. Google’s approach leans on Super Res Zoom, a computational process that stacks multiple frames to reconstruct detail the lens never fully captured. Motorola’s Super Res Zoom on the Razr Fold follows a similar AI-reconstruction model. All three ship with “100x” printed in the spec sheet. None of them are the same product. Marketing has successfully obscured an engineering distinction that determines everything about image quality at extreme range.

The still photography results from this comparison also don’t tell the full story of where this competition is heading. Zoom video — capturing usable footage at 30x or beyond while walking — remains a largely unsolved problem across all three platforms. Optical image stabilization degrades faster than AI can compensate when the subject is distant and the shooter is moving. Low-light zoom is equally unresolved: the photon-gathering limitations of small telephoto sensors don’t disappear because a neural network smooths the output. Google and Motorola have closed the gap on Samsung in daylight stills, but these two categories will determine who actually leads the next generation of zoom hardware. The results there could look nothing like what the Grand Canyon shots suggest.