OPPO unveils world's first periscope style '5x Dual Camera Zoom'

OPPO has unveiled '5x Dual Camera Zoom' – the world's first periscope-style dual-camera technology for smartphones at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017. 

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 company has been working on this dual-camera technology for almost a year now, and has filed currently more than 50 patents for this technology.

Idea for this 5x Dual Camera Zoom was inspired from periscope used on submarines, it said. 

OPPO said, "5x Dual Camera Zoom is the Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) solution. Different from other manufacturers who use optical image stabilization on the wide-angle lens, the company took a new approach and applied OIS directly to the telephoto lens."

This technology will offer  5x lossless zoom capability on a smartphone, which will set the bar high compared to the 2x zoom functions available in the market presently. 

5x dual camera module is only 5.7mm thick, which is even 10% thinner than a typical 2x optical zoom lens in a smartphone. Thus, it will help in keeping the smartphone thin. 

It utilises 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.

While there is also a 3x optical zoom featured in this technology, matched with a proprietary image fusion technology for digital zoom, giving users the industry’s first-ever lossless 5x dual camera zoom. 

Meanwhile, OIS solution can improve the performance of previous generations by 40%, and the prism mechanism dynamically adjusts its angle at precise increments of 0.0025o. This technology ensures that images are clear and stable even at full 5x zoom.

Sky Li added, “The dual cameras with wide-angled and telephoto lens, together with the periscope-style construction, our image fusion technology and the Optical Image Stabilisation, edges mobile photography even closer to what digital cameras are capable of doing."