Oppo brings world’s first periscope-styled 5x lossless zoom capability on smartphones

Things seem to be getting better by the day at the MWC’17. In line with the spate of new technologies unveiled at the event, Chinese tech giant Oppo gave a glimpse of the groundbreaking “5x Dual Camera Zoom” technology, the world’s first periscope-style dual-camera technology for smartphones.

The technology offers 5x lossless zoom capability on a smartphone, a breakthrough innovation that sets the bar higher when compared to the 2x zoom functions available in the market today. Users will also enjoy an image stabilization capability like never before while keeping the device thin and sleek.

Oppo worked for almost a year to develop the revolutionary periscope-styled dual-camera technology. Currently, more than 50 patents have been filed for this technology.

Sky Li, VP, Oppo, MD of International Mobile Business & President of Oppo India, said, “The ‘5x Dual Camera Zoom’ has opened up yet another realm of possibility in terms of smartphone photography, and is a reflection of our dedication to delivering on what our customers want and need - to take beautiful and clear pictures.”

The video below shows what Oppo has tried to achieve with this new capability:

Interestingly, the “5x Dual Camera Zoom” technology was inspired by the idea of a periscope on a submarine. The dual camera utilizes wide-angle and telephoto lenses, and the housing for the telephoto lens uses an innovative periscope-style structure. By shifting the angle of the telephoto lens by 90 degrees, the lens will have the space it needs for a deep zoom. A periscope-style prism then directs the path of the light entering the camera by 90 degrees, and sends the image through the telephoto lens when the user zooms in on a subject or object.

Also, this setup helps to keep a smartphone thin. Thanks to the periscope-style construction, the 5x dual camera module is now only 5.7mm thick, which is even 10 percent thinner than a typical 2x optical zoom lens in a smartphone.

The other breakthrough of this “5x Dual Camera Zoom” is the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) solution. Different from other manufacturers who use optical image stabilization on the wide-angle lens, Oppo took a new approach and applied OIS directly to the telephoto lens. Through the OIS technology, both the prism and telephoto lens intelligently sense vibrations and compensate in real time.

Oppo is currently the no. 1 smartphone brand in China with 16.8 percent market share, and the world’s fourth best-selling smartphone brand, according to IDC.