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My eyesight sucks. A detached retina and the subsequent operations to fix it, and the rise of glaucoma as a result, mean most of the vision in my left eye has gone. My right eye, on the other hand, is very short-sighted, meaning I can see bits of floating debris in the vitreous liquid behind the surface of my eye, which is distracting, and my current contact lens isn’t sitting correctly.
So while I can see, spotting fine details or seeing things clearly at a distance is a pain in the proverbial posterior. This harsh reality slammed into me particularly hard during a recent bachelor-party trip to Berlin. While steins of good German beer were consumed, we also did a lot of sightseeing – or at least my friends did, as I spent a good bit of time squinting.
That changed when I decided to lean on the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, both of which I had on my person, with the latter as a backup but also because I’m a tech journalist and live the dual-ecosystem life.
Specifically, the 5x telephoto cameras on both flagship phones came in very handy, letting me zoom in on details on the Reichstag or the myriad of street art sprayed onto the walls and buildings of the city. But both phones really helped me and my poor eyes when visiting the Berlin Zoo.
Zooming at the zoo
Now I’m not a huge fan of zoos; I appreciate the preservation side of things, but I don’t like seeing animals in limited space. Berlin Zoo did at least seem to have plenty of space for its collection of creatures, which was promising but also a bit of a challenge for my bad eyes.
I found myself desperately squinting into smartly made enclosures to spot some of the smaller and more camouflaged animals, or get a proper look at the ones in large enclosures that were sitting as far away from visitors as possible; I don’t blame them.
Enter the telephoto cameras of the aforementioned flagship phones. These basically become my eyes when entering the areas where the animals were better camouflaged or elusive. And they let me capture shots that clipped past the crowds and let me get a nice framed image of a prowling leopard or bemused bear; see the photo gallery below.
Advancements in the quality of cameras sensors, alongside optical zoom range and improved image processing – plus the addition of sensor fusion letting a phone take shots with multiple cameras at once and stitch an image out of them – has seen telephoto cameras, at least on some of the best phones, go from mild novelties to useful additions.
I’ve long favored telephoto cameras over ultra-wide ones, which can make me an outlier compared to some people. Maybe I just don’t have big groups of friends to capture in digital images. So the more recent push by flagship phones from bigger brands to go past 3x telephoto cameras and adapt 5x and above – think the past couple of generations of Galaxy, Pixel and Pro iPhones – has really caught my eye (pun partially intended).
And for helping me appreciate the range of animals at Berlin Zoo without enraging German animal handlers and administrators by leaping into lion enclosures, these telephoto cameras were basically essential.
Furthermore, the advancements in low-light photography have meant that when I entered a very dark section of the zoo where the nocturnal animals were kept, and where I basically couldn’t see, the night mode of the iPhone 16 Pro Max was a boon, letting me view various critters without activating a flash or anything obnoxiously disturbing.
Honestly, without such tech, I think I’d have stumbled from enclosure to enclosure without seeing a single critter.
Now I do need to see an optician to get a new contact lens that actually fits, and I’m not saying that looking at life through a smartphone is the panacea to my poor eyes.
Yet my trip to Berlin and its zoo hammered home quite how capable two of the best camera phones are. Sure, upgrades to phone cameras have been iterative lately. Nevertheless, each improvement leads to a better overall experience, and in my case, basically saved me from what could have been a rather miserable and frustrating time.