Although LG recently withdrew from the smartphone market, the South Korean company continues to work closely with phone manufacturers and develop components for its former competitors and current partners.
The latest technology developed by LG Innotek is a periscopic lens with moving components, which provides smooth telephoto movement in the zoom range of 4X-9X (in 1 µm increments) without compromising image quality. At the same time, the module remains compact and does not stand out. LG notes that its design will allow smartphone manufacturers to place fewer lenses on the back of their devices.
Traditional folding periscope lenses (such as the one that debuted on the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and has been used by the company ever since) use a combination of optical and digital zoom, usually offering fixed magnification levels such as 2X, 3X, 5X, 10X. LG’s new solution includes a tiny zoom drive, very similar to full-featured mirrorless or digital SLR cameras. The drive is very precise and allows the lens to smoothly switch between the 4X-9X zoom range without losing camera resolution and image quality.
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So far, Sony is the only major manufacturer to offer a smartphone with true optical zoom, and Oppo has also been working on the technology since at least 2021. The lens of the Sony Xperia 1 IV with a magnification of 3.5-5.2x is equivalent to 85-125 mm, which is slightly less than that of the new LG (100-200+ mm). The narrowest zoom range on the Xperia 1 IV slightly limited the usefulness of such zooming, and testers noted the less-than-ideal quality of the Sony camera.
The new lens is apparently fully compatible with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform – LG and Qualcomm are working together to optimize the module: providing autofocus, automatic exposure, white balance, shading correction. Perhaps the novelty can be seen from January 5 – LG says that some products will be presented at the CES 2023 exhibition.
There is a high probability that the iPhone will also be equipped with the new camera – Apple is LG Innotek’s largest customer. This guess fits well with previous information about the new periscopic lenses in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra.
LG is testing 6G in the terahertz range – it was possible to transmit data at 320 m
Sources: Phone Arena, The Verge
