Digital Zoom

Optical vs Digital Zoom: What Changes in Your Phone Camera

Pinch outward in a phone camera app and the subject becomes larger on screen. That simple gesture can hide an important difference: sometimes the phone changes how the scene is captured, while other times it mainly enlarges a smaller part of an image it already has. These approaches are commonly described as optical zoom and digital zoom. The distinction matters because making a subject look larger is not the same as recording more detail about it.