Poll: Do you only zoom to your camera’s preset levels or do you zoom freely?

Many Android phones today offer a few preset zoom levels in the camera app, and you’ll often find 0.6x (or 0.5x), 1x, and 2x options at the very least. Some phones also offer telephoto cameras for even more robust zoom options in the viewfinder.

That got us wondering whether you stick with these preset options or if you freely zoom and stop on whatever zoom level you want. Let us know via the poll below and leave a comment if you’d like to elaborate.

The preset options generally offer the best picture quality as they apply to the zoom level of the available cameras and the highest-quality cropped zoom. In the latter case, many phones with a high-resolution 1x camera can shoot 2x cropped shots at a lossless resolution. Meanwhile, phones like the OnePlus 13 have a 3x 50MP camera but can also shoot good-quality 6x cropped shots, so OnePlus includes a 6x preset option in its camera app as well.

We can definitely understand if you freely zoom using your camera app’s zoom slider or by pinching. This gives you maximum flexibility, allowing you to frame a photo exactly as you see fit. Maybe your phone camera offers 2x and 5x options but nothing in between, so you’ll have to manually zoom to 3x or 4x. Maybe you simply need more digital zoom, and the maximum preset option (e.g. 2x or 5x) isn’t enough. These interstitial zoom levels usually offer worse image quality than the preset zoom options in your camera app, but that trade-off might be worth it for some people.

Then again, some phones like the Pixel 9 Pro inexplicably lack a 10x zoom button, despite the phone’s 5x camera being capable of good-quality 10x cropped images. So you might only ditch the preset zoom buttons when you need a 10x shot. In any event, you can vote in the poll above to let us know!