Earlier today, at its Future Imaging Event, OPPO revealed three new camera technologies that could make their way into future smartphones. While they're all pretty interesting, they're also each at least a little derivative — improvements that build on prior feature implementations, including some of OPPO's. In fact, if you've followed smartphone camera news for the last half-decade or so, some of it will sound familiar. And, if you're in the US, you probably won't benefit from it.
First, OPPO is touting its new RGBW camera sensor, developed in partnership with Sony. "W" in this instance stands for white, which should mean better light-gathering ability, especially in low-light circumstances. If you remember when some companies used to augment a color sensor with a separate black and white sensor, combining the results for better low-light performance, this is sort of a similar idea, except all together on a single sensor. And, in fact, it's not a new idea.
Huawei actually did it back in 2015, and Sony did it in 2012. Just last year, OPPO's sister company Vivo announced something similar. But OPPO says the new design it's using eliminates issues the previous systems had, like signal crosstalk, a propensity to strong moiré, and poor color accuracy. OPPO has also integrated its own pixel binning logic and algorithms directly inside the sensor itself for improved compatibility, battery life, and performance.
All of this combines to mean ostensibly 60% better light capture and 35 % less noise in resulting photos. The company claims commercial availability for this new sensor technology at the end of the year in Q4.
In the same vein, OPPO is also building on an announcement it made last year for true, honest-to-god, actual adjustable focal length cameras — i.e., real "zoom."
Last year the company said it had developed a folded/periscope style camera module that allowed for 85-135mm equivalent zoom, and today the company says it's bumped those numbers up to 85-200mm equivalent with a system that has actual moving lens assemblies in a compact, phone-compatible that can adjust the focal length produced. One of the improvements compared to the prior design is using a more precise motor for those moving parts and a "Prismatic OIS" that can help mitigate both the more noticeable effects of movement at higher focal lengths and the smaller aperture most periscope-style cameras have. OPPO wouldn't tell us what aperture it can hit (it's probably pretty small/slow), but it did imply that the aperture varies based on zoom level. However, the company claims the ultimate brightness is consistent across the range thanks to other technologies.
Take these cherry-picked examples with a grain of salt, but OPPO's system shows much better detail at a higher effective "zoom."
Now, there are other added benefits like continuous zoom, more consistent white balance when "zooming" compared to switching between discrete focal lengths, and better quality compared to digital "zoom," but I'm honestly just excited for the simple prospect of more precise framing without over-processed images.
Coming back to the subject of OIS, OPPO is also announcing a new system for that as well, promising five-axis stabilization that includes separate lens and sensor movement to control for motion even more precisely. OPPO has some numerical claims, like "65% increase in vibration compensation performance," but the real-world applications should simply mean sharper and better photos on average compared to older OIS systems. The demonstrations (available in the video above at around 11:46) looked impressive, reducing motion in the company's comparison, though take the examples with a grain of salt. OPPO promises that it will land in Q1 2022.
(OPPO also reiterated its under-display tech teased earlier this month, but apart from some extra technical explanations for how it works, there's not much new there.)
Unfortunately, the direct effects of these camera technologies for most of our readers are zilch. None of this is guaranteed to make it into US smartphones — unless it's via the transitive property of parent company BBK and OnePlus. However, OPPO staunchly maintained the relationship with BBK had no impact in our briefing, implying the sister companies through that parent wouldn't simply get this stuff. But these improvements do place more pressure on companies that sell smartphones here, and I'd be psyched to see a similar adjustable focal length lens system make it into more phones — ideally, one I can buy stateside.