Oppo present 5x zoom smartphone camera prototype

The Chinese Mobile Phone maker Oppo presented the first 5x zoom smartphone camera that supposedly features optical zoom today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While digital zoom simply blows up the existing image and makes the picture worse the more you zoom in, optical zoom does not affect the image quality. Having 5x optical zoom in a smartphone is a tech-feat that is remarkable.

They use a gazillion of lenses and a prism to achieve that zoom. It’s still in prototype phase and only offers two zoom stages 1x and 5x at the moment using 2 different sensors, like the iPhone 7 Plus. The camera itself is only 5.7mm in depth so roughly the same size as “standard 2x zoom” smartphone cameras. A prism directs the light either to one optic and sensor combination or the other. They are arranged in a 90 degree angle from each other.

We are not yet 100% convinced the zoom will really be lossless, as Oppo also claims that the zoom is optical 3x but their own “image fusion technology” will work lossless. Usually this is not possible so we will be waiting patiently to see it in a working phone.