The 2x “lens” on the iPhone 14 Pro is surprisingly good

The 2x lens is a 12-megapixel crop of the main sensor... not actually a lens at all. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

One of the iPhone 14 Pro's big new features is a big new camera sensor. For the first time, an iPhone has a high-resolution main camera sensor - 48-megapixels to be exact - and the best thing about it isn't that you can take 48-megapixel photos. You can, sure, but RIP your phone's storage space. Nope, one of this sensor's best features is the 12 megapixels in the middle. Apple has added a 2x zoom mode to its camera app, and all it does is use the central portion of the main camera sensor to crop in and mimic the effect of a 48mm-equivalent telephoto lens. That's it. Simple, but it's actually kind of a big deal.

I wasn't expecting to like the 2x zoom. For starters, it feels dangerously close to digital zoom. That's when you zoom in on a...

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