Meet the new 240mm Zoom Mobile Lens

Meet the new 240mm Zoom Mobile Lens

If you’ve been following the hints and silhouettes, this is the first proper look. ShiftCam’s 240mm Zoom Lens is a pocket-size tele made to sit over the iPhone’s periscope camera and give you the long-lens look you can’t fake with a crop. This post isn’t about spec sheets; it’s about what 240mm does—how a frame reads when the background steps forward and distant detail actually holds.

Pocket-sized power (without the backpack)

For years, getting true tele presence meant committing to long glass and longer carry. 240mm flips that trade-off. It rides in a pocket next to your phone, shows up in places a backpack never would, and still delivers the telephoto character—subject presence, pulled-in backgrounds, that “oh, that’s the frame” feeling. This is real optical reach for your iPhone’s 5×, not a digital stretch. Bring less gear for the same shot, and say yes to moments you’d normally leave to “next time.”

Telephoto Compression You Can't Fake.

Smartphone camera apps often mix true optical steps with hybrid/digital zoom—so that “10×” button you tap isn’t always a real lens. On iPhone 15 Pro Max, the longest optical zoom is 5× (≈120 mm); anything beyond that (up to 25×) is digital, which enlarges pixels rather than changing perspective.

Across Android flagships, you’ll see the same pattern. Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra dropped its prior 10× periscope for a 5×, 50 MP tele and leans on sensor crop to present “10×” in the app—powerful, but not the same as a native 10× optic, and the UI doesn’t clearly separate optical from digitally assisted zoom.

Why do we care? Because telephoto compression—that pulled-forward background, the “closer” feel—comes from using a longer focal length optic, not from cropping. Digital zoom can mimic framing; it can’t change perspective.

Same spot. Three frames.

To make the difference obvious, we shot the exact same scene three ways: 1×, 5×, and 5× + 240mm. Nothing moved except the optics. At 1×, context dominates. At 5×, the subject steps forward and details begin to read. Add 240mm, and the background advances—edges clean up, textures hold at distance, and the whole composition tightens into the story you meant to tell. You can crop framing; you can’t crop this perspective shift.