Samsung’s Ultra line is known for its camera hardware, but a major leaker now believes that the telephoto system may remain mostly untouched for several generations. If true, the 50MP periscope launched with the Galaxy S24 Ultra could hold on for the S25 Ultra, S26 Ultra and perhaps even the S27 Ultra — four generations that the same core sensor drives.
A familiar 50MP periscope could have some staying power
The allegation is made by Ice Universe, a reliable Samsung watcher with a good track record in optics. The 50MP telephoto module — a small periscope with 0.7μm pixels in a sensor of around 1/2.5-inch class — he says won’t be replaced any time soon. This would follow Samsung’s lead in applying the 200MP ISOCELL HP2 main shooter as well as Sony’s IMX754 3x module over several flagships.
This same source has also suggested that Samsung perhaps alter the mid-range zoom camera in the S26 Ultra – possibly downgrading to a smaller 3x sensor that spits out 10MP images. In real-world terms, that means Samsung may rely even more on in-sensor crop and computational zoom for 8–10x shots, instead of bringing back a separate long-reach lens.
Samsung has already swung this one way. The S24 Ultra jettisoned the older 10x periscope in favor of a higher-res 5x, but made do by using sensor crop plus AI sharpening to achieve longer effective zoom. The performances have been competitive in bright light, but low-light reach is a tougher problem when the physical sensor and aperture arenʼt changing.
Reasons Samsung may use the same sensor
Among the most complicated components in a phone are the telephoto modules. Periscope stacks are thickening, actuator moving, heating and expensive. Yields are lower than standard wide cameras, and larger sensors make stabilization more challenging as heavier lenses are more difficult to move precisely. Reusing a design that works stabilizes the supply chain, raises yields in manufacturing and leads to slimmer devices.
There’s also a strategic angle. Samsung has made a big bet on computational photography—multi-frame fusion, semantic segmentation, and hybrid zoom pipelines. The company’s most recent ProVisual algorithms have brought more-realistic textures and greater detail retention at 5x to 10x without requiring an entirely new sensor. In other words, software can extend the life of good hardware.
And it’s not alone. Apple kept the 5x tetraprism around for another generation, while Google leans more on Super Res Zoom and machine learning to make up for its more modest optics. The rationale: if it’s image processing that delivers the enhancements consumers see, faster sensors and new lenses aren’t necessary every cycle.
The pressure to compete is real
Nonetheless, rivals are pressing hard on pure optics. Oppo and Sony have shown off continuous-zoom telephotos, mitigating the trade-off between 3x and 5x. Xiaomi has focused on large-sensor telephotos, doing what big glass can for portrait compression and low-light clarity. Huawei’s newest flagships equipped with sophisticated periscopes and big sensors have consistently — including on multiple independent rankings of cameras in phones — been leading in zoom and night photography.
Daylit zoom comparisons look good for Samsung’s S24 Ultra, which is also social-ready shooter. But in difficult light or at extreme megazoom, larger telephoto sensors and brighter optics from competitors can take the edge in lower noise and higher micro-contrast. If the Ultra generation is able to hold the same periscope to CCD latency for 4 cycles, it will be criticism of software and imaging ISP tuning, that it stagnated.
What could still get better without new hardware
Even if you keep the sensor, you can pull some levers.
(57) Exquisite OIS algorithms can also improve effective sharpness at longer focal lengths. Improved lens coatings greatly reduce flares and color veiling correlated with the use of digital cameras and also increase contrast in evening and night vignetting or darkened cityscapes. 5x–10x-optimized multi-frame fusion can lift the detail while avoiding the overcooked look found in most zoom images.
On the silicon size, a more powerful ISP and NPU can help the burst capture and depth fusion to be moved along quicker, leading to more stable long-range shots of subjects in motion. Samsung might tweak default processing to maintain texture rather than heavily smoothing noise — which many power users and reviewers request.
Call it damning with faint praise, but the pattern fits
None of this is official. Samsung had no comment, and plans can change late in development if suppliers, costs or competitive landscape changes. That said, the company has reused its main and 3x sensors in the past, and the broader industry shift toward computational photography makes the claim plausible.
If the leak pans out, a handful of the next few Ultra generations will rest on a known 50MP telephoto base. The question isn’t whether the hardware is capable — it clearly is — but whether Samsung’s software and tuning can continue to eke out fresh gains year over year as rivals explore bigger sensors and more exotic zoom systems.
