While other companies fix their flagships (LG G6) or milk their past (Nokia 3310 nostalgia), OPPO seizes the future. At Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Spain, the company debuted their new 5x Dual Camera Zoom technology. This means 5x lossless zoom with OIS with the telephoto mechanism arranged like a periscope. Nobody has done this before on a phone.
What does 5x Dual Camera mean?
With this tech, OPPO wants to match the zoomed in image output of digital cameras. Vibrations when zooming in (a common problem with optical zoom) is reduced with an physical OIS system (not even the iPhone 7 Plus and ASUS ZenFone 2 and 3 Zoom have that), resulting in sharper images. As opposed to optical zoom cameras with a huge camera bump on the rear, OPPO’s 5x Dual Camera Zoom arranges the zoom mechanism in a clever way: periscope syle. Instead of light entering the sensor that’s often flat on the phone’s rear, it hits a prism and turns 90 degrees into the telephoto lens and into the sensor.
Breakthroughs Tech Takes Time
According to OPPO’s official press release, the 5x Dual Camera technology
- took almost a year to develop and improves on current dual-camera solutions that can only achieve a 2x zoom. This meant matching the 3x optical zoom to a proprietary image fusion technology to come up with the first-ever lossless 5x dual camera zoom that captures images with the same depth and vividness as those taken with digital cameras.
- takes inspiration from a submarine’s periscope, which also keeps the 5x dual camera module at only 5.7mm thick, 10 percent thinner than a usual smartphone’s typical 2x optical zoom lens.
- features a state-of-the-art optical image stabilization (OIS) applied directly to the telephoto lens. This approach is a departure from the method used by other manufacturers who use optical image stabilization on the wide-angle lens. This OIS set up allows both the prism and telephoto lens to intelligently sense and eliminate vibrations that cause blurs, and ensures clarity even at full 5x zoom. The prism mechanism dynamically adjusts its angle at precise increments of 0.0025 degrees.
Continuing Momentum in Mobile Photography
In 2016, OPPO’s F1 Plus, the second phone in the Selfie Expert F series, was the first device to feature a 16 megapixel front camera. In the same year, OPPO and Sony co-developed the customized 1/2.8-inch IMX398 sensor with a big f/1.7 aperture for OPPO’s R9s model. The OPP F1s remains a top seller in the midrange sector.
A report by German market research firm GfK revealed that as of July last year, OPPO is the Philippines’ second bestselling smartphone brand, despite being in the country for only three years. OPPO is also the world’s fourth bestselling smartphone brand for two years now, says Global market intelligence firm International Data Corporation.
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