The new iPhone 12 promises a number of welcome upgrades, including 5G connectivity, a faster A14 Bionic processor, and longer battery life. But there is one feature I wish Apple would steal from Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

Before you dismiss this as a gimmick, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra's zoom really impressed me when I was testing Samsung's new phone for two weeks. The optical zoom on the telephoto lens is 5x, and the digital zoom is up to 50x.

By comparison, the current iPhone 11 Pro has a 2x telephoto zoom and 10x digital zoom, and rumor has it that the iPhone 12 Pro will have up to 3x optical zoom. There have been no credible rumors about digital zoom on this flagship device.

If these leaks are true, Samsung should have a huge advantage on the camera front. Look at how well they were able to zoom in on the sign above the front of the fish market from across the highway. Scary good.

Shooting at 50x zoom proved to be difficult because of the considerable camera shake that occurs at this zoom level. However, the 10x and 20x zoom shots produced amazing results.

See the gallery below. Zoomed in on the tree from the other side of the garden. When zoomed in, one could see not only the details of the bark, but also the hanging flower baskets, wind chimes, and birdhouses.

The iPhone 11 Pro Max has a maximum digital zoom of 10x, so I compared it to the hybrid zoom of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in a nearby park.

As you can see in this picture of the creek, the Samsung camera delivers a much sharper image; the iPhone's results are blurry, which is to be expected; the Note 20's image is not perfect, as some of the sunlit highlights are blurry, but overall it is clearly superior.

The Note 20 Ultra's zoom operation is also quite smooth. A simple press of the zoom button jumps to 5x, and from there you can choose 10x, 20x, or 50x; you can even go back to 4x, which is a nice touch.

In July, we heard that Apple may be arranging suppliers for periscope zoom lenses for 2022. This means that we should not expect a powerful optical zoom for the iPhone 12, and we may not expect the iPhone 13 either. Because now that I've tried space zoom on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, I don't want to give it up.