Chinese manufacturer OPPO is attending Mobile World Congress this year but just like last year they’re not really showing off a new phone. Instead, the company unveiled a brand-new camera technology that will more than likeyl find its way into their top tier phones later this year.
The tech, dubbed the 5x Dual Camera System promises to bring lossless 5x zoom via an interesting (and familiar) periscope-style setup.
As you can see in the photo above , the technology utilizes two cameras – one is the normal shooter that takes regular photos, while the other is the 5x optical zoom lens that takes close-up photos.
While the orientation of the regular camera is pretty much the same as other phones, the periscope-style secondary camera is where the 5x zoom happens. The camera has 50 individual parts which includes several lenses that diverts lights through a prism and into a telephoto lens right inside the smartphone. This way OPPO is able to achieve 5x zoom without a huge drop in quality.
We’ve seen a similar setup before in ASUS’ original Zenfone Zoom, though OPPO’s implementation of the technology is infinitely more elegant, as it doesn’t involve bulky motorized mechanisms like the one in the Zoom. But the technology that OPPO has come up with is so efficient that the entire camera module is only 5.7mm thin, and the company reckons that there are conventional dual-camera zoom setups out in the market today that are slightly thicker than that.
To combat image vibration that might be caused while shooting in 5x, OPPO has included image stabilization technology that keeps everything from shifting while shooting. The prism adjusts its angle relative to the movement of the phone by a thousandth of a degree to keep everything nice and smooth.
The technology is quite interesting, and it gets around the limitations of periscope-style systems that we’ve seen before. Hopefully we see this technology in a phone sooner rather than later. Maybe in the Find 10? Who knows.
