One of the main features that the millennial generation considers to be mandatory in a good phone, is an amazing camera. Companies are constantly trying to come up with the best mobile phone cameras, which are giving tough competition to even the professional DSLRs. Heralding the latest iteration in providing the best that smartphones have to offer in the camera section, Oppo took the stage at Mobile World Congress 2017 to unveil a new camera technology that offers 5X zoom.
It is a two-lens setup and while the first camera is a pretty standard affair, the other one is what Oppo is calling a "periscope lens". It uses a set of lenses stacked in the extended camera module that shifts to cause variations in the focal length. The lens is designed horizontally so that it doesn't create any unnecessary bulge sticking outside.
How does it work? The light received by phone is diverted towards the camera module in a 90-degree angle through a prism. Once it reaches inside it passes through more than 50 parts that are stacked in a 5.7mm lens. And then it gets registered by the sensor.
The phone also makes use of an Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) unit to prevent image blurriness due to movement and thus it is capable of 40 per cent better imaging compared to "previous solutions", claims Oppo.
The company is, however, not calling this technology as one that provides optical zoom but as one that produces a "5x lossless zoom".
Oppo used a smartphone, which doesn't belong to their brand, ( did not mention any other brand as well) to demonstrate this technology in MWC.
Moreover, there are no indications, as to when we are going to actually see this technology being implemented on smartphones or when this will be made available to the consumers. Nonetheless, this marks a very interesting turn for image technology. If this is as good as it appears to be, it may actually render point and shoot cameras non-significant once it comes out.
