Quote from: xpclient on November 07, 2019, 20:02:32
No matter the reach, the resulting image will have the same perspective distortion as a 3.7x optical zoom.

I'm pretty sure that's false, perspective distortion depends solely on the FoV, as long as it's centered. Cropping from the corner of the 3.7x you'd definitely get something that looks somewhat different, akin to a shift lens, but cropped is cropped and a cropped 3.7x will only look like a cropped 3.7x off axis to the same extent, not the original.
Also GSMA's review is out and the cropped 5x looks surprisingly decent.
Well maybe not that surprising, the 2x is 1/2.55", best in class, likely owing to the 9mm+ thick body with an additional significant hump, but that thickness may also afford a better 3.7x, which is still better cropped to 5x than the diffraction limited slow periscopes.
The issue with this model is the software, which yields mediocre low light shots in most circumstances, despite the 3/4" sensor.

According to Android Authority:

"Xiaomi advertises this third lens as a 5x optical telephoto lens, but that is not the case. This is a 3.7x optical telephoto lens on an 8MP sensor. Xiaomi then performs a digital crop to produce a similar reach as a 5x telephoto, but make no mistake, these are not the same thing. No matter the reach, the resulting image will have the same perspective distortion as a 3.7x optical zoom.

This is pretty misleading marketing from Xiaomi. While most consumers won't be able to tell the difference, this is not true 5x optical zoom, as is printed on the body of the device. There's a reason Huawei had to use a special prism mechanism in the P30 Pro to make 5x optical zoom in a smartphone a reality."

Actually 108mp or even 27mp shots are pretty much bad if you want the same quality per pixel as latest flagships. Not to forget that processing algorithm can be updated, but I wonder.
Another problem it got is depth of field, it should use about f3 to get the same as some other flagships.
Sensor size and resolution is basically the main reason why output of far away objects or at night should be better, how is it in the end depends on the processing though.

In the smartphone realm, software is more than half the story, and it seems that Xiaomi debuted vastly superior hardware coupled with quite primitive software.
At least Samsung has a few more months to work on it. There should definitely be more to a 3/4", at 27MP. If long bursts overwhelm the ISP, even managing a 2 shot merge should vastly improve results, since the starting point of this CMOS is a lot higher.