BB Curve 8520/8530 :: Camera Zoom In Function Not Working

I have a Curve 8520 that's brand new. However, I notice when I zoom the camera and take a picture, the camera doesn't actually zoom in. All it does is resize the image so that it gets smaller the more it says the zoom number. For example, If I take a picture at 1x zoom, it will be 1024x768 pixels on my computer screen. However, if I zoom in 3x, it makes the picture much smaller (like 600x800) and more focused (and pixelated) on the center of the subject of the picture.

So that on the tiny Blackberry screen, the picture appears bigger when resized down a lot. When has digital zoom meant resizing the image to fool the user into thinking that it is zoomed only when viewing it on the blackberry screen? When I zoom in, it should keep the picture the same size! What a gip for a relatively high quality phone camera too.