I'm not sure why Samsung has coded the camera app to make this switch but for whatever reason, my S21 Ultra will swap over to the ultrawide lens between the magnification levels of 1x all the way to as high as 2x for no good reason.
The quality of such a cropped photo is significantly and noticeably worse than a photo taken with the much larger and appropriately zoomed 108mp main sensor. The app shouldn't make this switch and it's kinda annoying to have to toggle zoom levels over and over while putting my finger over the ultrawide to "trick" the software into going back to the main sensor.
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Well hypothetically it'd be used at anything below 1x (i.e. .6x to .9x) but I would guess you already know it is impossible for the main sensor to do anything below 1x.
I'm using a snapdragon variant, that may be the discrepancy since the Exynos has a different ISP than the SD888. Are you using an Exynos or SD variant?
Under some circumstances I'm positive this occurs. I cover the top lens to check. Lowering the magnification to below 1 confirms I'm covering the right sensor as I still see my fingertip.
The switch over to the main sensor sometimes doesn't occur until over 2x magnification. It is VERY annoying since a cropped ultrawide delivers nothing close to comparable photos to the 108mp main sensor (especially in low light scenarios).
I realize this but this doesn't fix the issue. I don't want to be stuck at 3:4 and shooting without the nonabayer to get the main sensor to be used in those situations where it should be used. The 108mp mode does increase detail but ultimately reduces low-light performance and these low-light shots are the situations where I notice the difference the most. When shooting in low light and the phone defaults to the ultrawide, I get much more grainy images, shooting in 108mp mode doesn't help this much.
It'd be nice to be able to independently select each lens and then zoom however I personally would like while being locked into the lens I select.
Just an update to this post but I believe I understand the issue I'm having here. My guess is that the minimum focus distance of the ultrawide lens is shorter than that of the primary sensor (since it is used for macro shots w/ the Ultra due to not having fixed focus like the other devices in the S21 lineup).
With this in mind, the laser auto focus system of the primary lens is probably detecting objects within a preset distance that causes the app to default over to the ultrawide lens instead.
The laser auto focus system isn't quite as accurate as something like a ToF or LiDAR sensor (especially in lower light situations like my current issue tends to occur in) at discerning exact distances. A specific distance would be helpful for deciding on whether to go to the ultrawide's macro mode or stick to the standard lens at 1x but laser auto focus is more or less just able to discern if a specific portion of a scene is in focus or not (not necessarily how far away it is like the aforementioned sensors).
With all that said, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the system is working as intended but is simply not reading the scene correctly and assuming I'm a bit closer to a macro shot than I actually am (the shots in question are taken at approximately 8-12 inches when this happens, close but not quite macro territory).
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