With the reveal of an under-display selfie camera earlier this month and now the introduction of true continuous zoom lens for its smartphones, it seems like Oppo is on a roll these days.
In a recent “Future Imaging Technology Launch Event” held online, Oppo announced a new telephoto lens with continuous optical zoom. Most devices have periscope telephoto lenses but with the continuous zoom, the lens elements would move throughout the 85-200mm equivalent zoom range which would result in crisp images at every focal length. That way there would be no need for digital zoom, cropping or artificial sharpening to enhance the images. Vivo also announced a similar concept but its range was limited between 130-195mm-equivalent. Whereas, Oppo’s continuous zoom would start at 85mm all the way till 200mm. The advantage of using one camera across different focal lengths provides better performance and results in terms of color and white balance. But don’t get too excited just yet. Oppo hasn’t announced any official launch date for this feature on a commercial phone yet and knowing Oppo and their ‘concept phones’, it might be a while since we see it in the markets.
Coming to the next big reveal, Oppo announced a five-axis optical image stabilization system that uses both techniques of lens-shift and sensor-shift while combining them with the movement data from the phone’s gyroscope. This allows for three times better stabilization than the regular OIS camera modules. Fortunately, Oppo confirmed a release date in the first quarter of 2022 for this OIS system.
Last but not least, Oppo revealed a new image sensor that uses an RGBW sub-pixel layout. Yes, the W stands for white subpixels which the company claims is used for a 60% increase in light sensitivity. While the earlier attempts at RGBW sensors weren’t too successful, this time Oppo believes it would be successful due to advanced manufacturing processes and improved demosaicing algorithms. Fans of Oppo would be thrilled to learn that this feature would be included in phones shipping in the last quarter of 2021 so they won’t have to wait too long.
