It is one possible step along the road to pinch-to-zoom, but it is definitely not pinch-to-zoom itself.
They're also making a lot of noise about how rare it is to have a 6x optical zoom lens on a camera of this size, which is sorta true.
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The idea is that it gives much better quality shots when you zoom in compared to a normal camera phone, which matters because there is no room for a big zoom lens on a typical mobile.
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The zoom is quite smooth -- it certainly did the trick snapping photos of strangers socializing in the halls of the Cologne Convention Center.
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The Coolpix 4800 has a resolution of "only" four megapixels, but they do toss in an 8.3x optical zoom lens (it's actually the smallest digital camera with that much optical zoom), which is nice since once most consumers realize they don't need more than four or five megapixels stuff like optical zoom and lens quality is going to be become a bigger and bigger deal.
The grubby, high-ISO 1080i video above can't transmit this experience -- all we could do is zoom in on a detail and then zoom out again to show how small a proportion it was of the total image.
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The Nokia 808 PureView is also capable of capturing a mind-boggling amount of small detail -- this is what allows it to offer up to three times lossless zoom on its 5-megapixel images, with enough pixels from a cropped selection to make up an image.
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Since a final 8- or 5-megapixel photo usually contains enough detail for printing and is easier to store and transmit, it's possible to use those 41 megapixels to zoom in or stabilize the image without resorting to interpolation and losing information.
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The wide-angle lens give allows expanded field of view needed for group shots, ensuring everyone is in frame even in a close-up shot whilst the powerful zoom makes it possible to capture detailed photos even when the subjects are of a distance.
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Like the Kobo, the Story HD can also zoom in and pan PDFs -- the process is a little tedious, but it's a handy feature nonetheless.
The new flagship camera in the WB long-zoom series makes it easy for users to achieve excellent quality pictures from a camera that is stylish and classic in design.
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This is of course a way to disguise the lack of pinch-to-zoom functionality, but it actually works pretty well as a single-handed operation on a small device anyway.
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