Confirmed: OnePlus 7 Pro's telephoto camera clicks portraits and zoomed-in shots in different megapixels

OnePlus 7 Pro was marketed for several reasons and one of them was the triple rear camera set up at the back. Although the wide-angle camera lens was the ‘new’ element in the trio, another feature touted was the telephoto camera that came with 3x optical zoom. However, recently a user on Reddit claimed that the telephoto camera lens actually came with 2.2x optical zoom and the rest of it was digitally cropped to reduce the resolution but zoom in a bit more to the ‘3x’ mark.

However, OnePlus was quick to clear the air as it issued a statement to Android Police.

In the statement the company re-confirmed that the telephoto camera lens has 3x optical zoom and that no digital zooming is done. But it did say that the portrait shots by that telephoto camera were clicked in higher megapixels as compared to the zoomed-in shots.

“The OnePlus 7 Pro has 3x zoom with no digital zoom or loss of detail. The telephoto camera serves two main purposes: 3x zoom and portrait mode photography. It will switch the field of view depending on the camera mode. With 3x zoom, the telephoto camera delivers the advertised lossless 8 megapixels images. Portrait mode utilizes all 13 megapixels from the sensor in the telephoto camera,” said OnePlus to Android Police.

OnePlus 7 Pro includes an 8MP telephoto lens with a pixel size of 1um, OIS and f/2.4 aperture. The primary camera has a 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor with 1.6um pixel size, 7P glass lens, OIS, EIS and f/1.6 aperture, while the ultra-wide camera includes a 16MP sensor with f/2.2 aperture and 117-degree field of view. The front camera, on the other hand, has a 16MP Sony IMX471 sensor with 1um pixel size, EIS and f/2.0 aperture.

The company is already working on a software update that is supposed to fix the overall camera performance. This comes after the smartphone received a mixed reaction from critics (including us) in the camera reviews.

“The camera team have been working all the time on analyzing and fixing issues. Every system update contains code from camera of improving the camera quality. I believe some of you receive an update when you got your OnePlus 7 Pro. That’s a significant update for camera and I think you don’t want to miss it. Moreover, we are working on the next update which is going to be rolled out in a week or so. This update contains improvement on the HDR effect and Nightscape mode, and more tweaks based on some feedbacks from you and reviewers. From our test, photos look substantially better,” said a OnePlus staff member in the company forum few days ago.