Optical Zoom

Excerpt from “Optical v. Digital Zoom”

The optical lens uses a visual zoom. This uses magnification, like a magnifying glass, to zoom in. The iPhone supports up to 2x magnification anything further uses a digital zoom which removes the outer pixels and basically pre-crops the image. Optical zoom is better because when you zoom in the quality is not decreased like it is when you use digital zoom, although, like digital zoom, optical zoom can only zoom in so much.