Chinese phone maker Oppo demonstrated another new dual camera technology at the Mobile World Congress this week. Oppo’s tech couples a telephoto lens with a wide-angle lens to allow for 3 x optical zoom. While this is in itself is not a huge innovation where the Oppo tech is unique is that it uses a prism inside the phone to allow for the lens to be put inside the mobile length ways so that the phone can be kept thin without any ugly bumps. This had been done before by Asus in their Zenzoom phone but Oppo opted to go for a digital solution to meld the two images rather than an optical approach. So although it is only a 3 x optical zoom, Oppo are claiming that you can get 5 x zoom without loss by their use of software.
The handset shown at MWC did have a large bezel at the top which was housing the camera but as this was a preproduction unit hopefully this will be reduced by the time the camera is ready to go into production.