I wish the Pixel 10 Pro skipped the 1x camera altogether for two zoom lenses

For the past few years, I’ve taken an average of 4-5,000 photos with my Pixel phones every year, from random foods and moments to gorgeous landscapes, beautiful street views, sports events, concerts, and more. I’d say I qualify as a mobile photography connoisseur at this point, though “addict” may be the more accurate word. But if there’s one thought that keeps popping up time and again when I take my Pixel out of my pocket to snap photos, it’s that I rarely, very rarely use the main “1x” lens.

My phone’s best lens is the one I use the least

The main lens on the best camera phones with the highest megapixel number, biggest aperture, and most features is actually very wide. At 1x, most phones have a lens that equates to a 26-28mm lens on a DSLR camera, a good focal if you want to capture almost everything your vision allows you to see. But many photographers prefer 50mm lenses (almost the equivalent of 2x on modern phones) because of their zoomed-in perspective, which is closer to what we humans see when we focus on something.

I notice this a lot in my photos, too. If I spot a subject and think, “Oh, that’ll be a nice photo,” I’ll often be surprised when I open my phone’s camera because of all the “fluff” around my subject, which I hadn’t noticed with my own eyes and is now visible on my display and part of my photo. Passers-by on a street, heads poking from the crowds at a concert or sports event, floors, ceilings, clutter, too much sky, too much ground, too many distractions… It’s tough to grab a great 1x shot; it’s much easier to zoom in to 2x, cut the noise, and focus on one part. Exactly like my eyes had originally seen the subject.

There’s really an art to making good 25mm shots on a camera but unfortunately, in everyday life, there are just so many visual distractions to stop me from achieving that. Real life isn’t perfect, and I don’t have the time to wait for it to be. I can’t sweep away the clutter, wait hours for people to move to capture the perfect crowdless moment at an attraction, or hope for a moment of stillness to grab that perfect shot.

This is why I gravitate to the 50mm focal length — or the 2x on my phone. It’s much easier to snap a good 2x shot because of the freedom to frame my photo however I want, with less visual clutter, and without waiting for a perfect opportunity that may never come. Check these 1x vs 2x shots below: In some of the 1x shots, I couldn’t avoid the crowds; in others, I waited for the perfect moment; and in others, I just got a lot of boring extras around the main subject of the photo. By comparison, the 2x shot was easier to snap and always more focused.

Even when I’m just taking a photo of a document, I’ll just put my hands further away to avoid their shadows, zoom to 2x, and snap that. That is to say: under the most controlled situation and with a steady subject that doesn’t move, I still rarely use the 1x lens of my phone. And that’s the one that Google, Samsung, and every other company is touting as the flagship lens!

Besides, if I really want a wide-angle shot of a stunning landscape or if I’m trying to create a sense of immensity in my shot, I’ll most definitely privilege the ultrawide lens, not the main one. Anything from 0.5x to 0.7x is bound to give me the engulfing skewed perspective I want. Plus, the visual distortion will almost certainly be more interesting to look at than a flat 1x shot.

It’s too late in the phone’s development cycle to wish for bigger changes, but a girl can dream. Instead of one zoom lens at 5x, I’d want to see two zoom lenses on Google’s next flagship — maybe the 11 Pro? The first one would be a good 5x periscope, similar to what I’ve been using on the Pixel 7 Pro, 8 Pro, and 9 Pro for several years — though I wouldn’t mind an upgraded sensor that can handle better zoom and less quality degradation after 10x. The OnePlus 13’s zoom powers leave me a little jealous, especially knowing that OnePlus was able to extract all of that from a 3x lens!

In my ideal setup, the other lens, the one to replace the main camera, would be a 48MP 2x telephoto that can extrapolate up to 4x zoom, quasi-lossless. There would surely be a bit of a loss at the fringe between 4x and 5x, but that’s a small price to pay for all the rest. The obvious advantage would be having high-quality 2x, 3x, and 4x photos — the zoom ranges that I want to use the most when I pull out my Pixel 9 Pro. The problem is that right now, 2x is the only reliable level, and I’m sacrificing the pixel-binning advantage of my main lens when I use it. 3x is a level I rarely try, and 4x is questionable enough and relies on too much digital cropping and sorcery that I almost never use it.

A base 48MP 2x telephoto would make all those shots more reliable and open up a new world of creativity for me. 12MP 2x shots would be pixel-binned with less noise and more clarity; they’d be perfect for portraits of people and pets, more intimate and higher quality than what we get now with the Pixel 9 Pro’s main lens. Meanwhile, 12MP 3x and 4x shots wouldn’t need to resort to digital zoom; they’d be cropped, lossless, straight out of the 48MP sensor.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the last few years where I caught myself thinking, “Gah, 2x is too far, 5x is too close!” That’s when the perk of having better 2x, 3x, and 4x zoom would be most palpable to me — when I want to zoom in more than 2x, but not exactly to 5x. It’s that creative range, which is now off-bounds to me, that would be suddenly attainable. I can’t tell you what I’d try, but once I have the freedom to click that 3x or 4x button in my camera app, knowing that I won’t sacrifice quality or detail, I’m sure I’d start using it a lot more often.

Where does that leave the main lens and 25mm shots? Well, that’s the void that a good ultrawide lens would have to fill. See, if Google can digitally crop a good 12MP zoomed 2x photo out of a 50MP 1x lens, then it should be able to, just as well, crop a good 12MP 1x out of a 50MP 0.5x ultrawide.

I’ve done some homework to test out my theory. On my Pixel 9 Pro, I’m able to force the phone to use a specific lens (Photo settings > Pro > Lens selection manual). So I picked the ultrawide lens and zoomed in to 1x. You can see the results below.

At first glance, it might seem like there’s no drop in quality, but zoom in to a 100% crop, and you’ll notice that the ultrawide lens doesn’t offer as much detail or clarity as the main sensor. It’s like a brushed watercolor in some places, with crushed darks and less impressive HDR.

But then again, Google hasn’t optimized the ultrawide sensor for 1x shots, so there’s no reason to expect them to be good. They’re workable as is, but I bet that with a little optimization they’d get closer and closer to what we get with the main camera now. If so, this would be a sacrifice I’m willing to make in exchange for better photos in the 2x-4x zoom range.

Or, you know, I could just as well do away with the ultrawide lens altogether and keep the main 1x sensor along with two zoom lenses. I’d use the fancy new Panorama mode to create a bigger sense of perspective. There are always solutions.

So yes, what I’m preaching and hoping for is a world where the wider camera lenses become secondary, and the 2x lens takes the crown as the main go-to camera. I know I’m crazy, but I’m not alone. This is a sentiment several of my Android Authority colleagues have shared in recent times. We just love zoom, we want more versatile zoom, and if a fourth lens isn’t an option on a Pixel for budgetary reasons, then by all means, take away that wide camera and give us two zoom lenses instead. We’d make do with a cropped 1x shot when needed, and we’d be happy.