Why did OPPO Retractable Camera Phone Emerge?
Smartphone manufacturers never stopped on the road of optical innovation from a single camera to multi-camera, from low pixel to high pixel, to faster autofocus, optical anti-shake, and still developing.
Recently, at the third OPPO INNO DAY 2021, Conference was held to promote future technology development, where OPPO’s new self-researched Oppo retractable camera phone was officially unveiled, which is regarded as another major upgrade in the field of smartphone optics.
According to the coverage from ItHome, the telescopic camera not only breaks the deadlock of large base and telephoto, making the thickness of the phone no longer limited but also provides a larger optical zoom to achieve DSLR-like effects.
Recently, the pop-up retractable lens has aroused widespread concern in the industry. From the public parameters of the prototype, the pop-up retractable camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor, 50mm equivalent focal length, and F2.4 aperture is a superb configuration, which not only supports waterproof but also has the function of automatic retraction when dropped.
Specifically, the OPPO prototype on display, the phone’s main camera sensor in the contracted state is an ordinary wide-angle large base main camera, when switched to a specific mode, the main camera will automatically expand. After popping out, the focal length reaches 50mm, thus converting it into a portrait lens with 2X optical zoom capability. This makes the main camera a wide-angle + portrait lens, and the telescopic design makes the design more compact and saves space inside the body.
Thus, this time OPPO launched the telescopic camera structure design, which can be said to be another exploration of the camera design. The camera chip of this prototype is supplied by Sony, while the phone lens and motor are from Chengrui Optical.
In fact, about the design of the camera form, OPPO has always had its unique ideas. However, this time, why OPPO will work on the pop-up retractable camera? Perhaps the reason can be traced from “wanting a telephoto experience and not wanting the phone to become heavy”.
Looking at the whole cell phone camera market, when the pixels continue to upgrade, the lens needs to continue to upgrade, and because of this, we can see the number of lenses is increasing.
But when the number of lenses increases, the weight of the lens will increase, on the other hand, when the camera chip is the same, the focal length is thicker than the short focal length lens. That’s why the majority of flagship models with multiple primes only use large base camera chips in super-wide-angle and wide-angle, but still use small base chips in telephoto.
It is understood that the emergence of the telescopic camera so that the thickness of the phone is no longer a limitation. When you don’t need to shoot, the thickness of the camera is comparable to the thickness of the phone, and when you need to shoot, the camera pops out to reach the specified focal length position for shooting. Secondly, the telescopic camera can be paired with a large base sensor and a large aperture lens, so the image quality is better compared to traditional cameras.
However, the application of a telescopic camera on a cell phone is not easy. According to public information, around 2008, cell phone manufacturers had launched products with telescopic lenses to achieve product differentiation, but the thickness was extremely thick and lost portability. Since then, exploring how to achieve the application of the telescopic camera in the smartphone has been a major issue in the industry.
Now, equipped with a telescopic camera prototype, which means that the product may not be far from us. With the support of the telescopic camera, the large bottom sensor installation can be applied to a thinner cell phone, we know. At the same time, in the case of equivalent modules, the telescopic lens can provide a larger optical zoom, compared to the conventional telephoto module, which can capture more details from the image sensor.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that in the general environment of cell phone camera pixels continue to upgrade, it puts forward higher technical requirements for cell phone lenses and motors, for lens manufacturers means lens increase, for motor manufacturers, today’s VCM motors can no longer meet the requirements of telephoto HD shooting in background bokeh.
In other words, the telescopic camera not only can achieve the effect of SLR but also can well solve the above contradictions, in my opinion, the era of successful application of retractable cameras in smartphones has come.
