Oppo’s new camera system employs a clever design to incorporate optical zoom into the Smartphone. Instead of having the lens-array and the sensor in one line, Oppo has utilized the design of a periscope. Oppo had earlier sent out an invite indicating that they’d be unveiling something ground breaking for smart phone photography, which is exactly what the crowds attending MWC received. Oppo did not, unveil a new smart phone at their Mobile World Congress conference, but instead showed off new camera technology that brings optical zoom to smart phones, without the camera bump at the back. Oppo 5x.
MWC: Oppo 5x Dual Camera Zoom
According to the demo showed off by Oppo, the light comes in through the camera opening, hits a prism, and is reflects at a 90-degree angle through a lens array with a sensor at the end of the path. Optical zoom has been kind of a holy grail for smart phone photography. This design allows Oppo to give the users 3x optical zoom, however, the second wide angle lens also adds image data to the mix and using what Oppo calls “image fusion technology” the optical zoom can be increased to 5x. While we have seen various companies’ attempts it, none of them have managed to get it perfect. While this is an exciting development, we are yet to see the technology makes its way into an actual smart phone, given that Oppo didn’t announce one this year at MWC 2017.
We had Nokia fuse a 42-megapixel sensor in the Lumia 1020 so that you could zoom into the photo, mostly because the resulting image was a 5-megapixel jpeg. The iPhone 7 Plus with its dual lens setup offers just 2x optical zoom. Most smart phones currently support 2x zoom functions. Besides offers users Users an image stabilization capability like never before, while keeping the smart phone thin. Oppo today announced at MWC 2017 a very promising, periscope-style dual-camera technology for smart phones, which offers a 5x lossless zoom capability.