Oppo’s flagship 5G phone — the Reno 5G — took Oppo five years to make and when you see its 10x zooms lens, you can see why it took a while to make.
With its 10x zoom camera phone, Oppo is challenging Huawei. The Reno 5G is expected to release this May and will be priced at $1,000. It will be launched alongside the Reno 10x zoom, which is priced at $890 and releasing early June, and the Reno, which is priced at $560 and is releasing May 10th.
All three of the Reno phones use a pop-up camera wedge for 16-megapixel f/2.0 selfies. They also have a 48-megapixel f/1.7 main rear camera. The main difference between the Reno 10x Zoom and the Reno 5G is the Reno 10x Zoom doesn’t have 5G radio. They feature the same 13-megapixel f/3.0 periscopic zoom camera and an 8-megapixel f/2,2 ultrawide camera.
All three of the cameras cover a focal length of 16mm to 10mm, which points to the “10x hybrid zoom.” The smaller Reno has just a 5-megapixel f.24 assistive camera so it can add bokeh to the main camera.
How Oppo developed its 10x hybrid zoom
In an interview with Engadget, Senior Camera Engineer Li Longjia talked about how they created its 10x hybrid zoom technology. As said earlier in the article, this camera took five years to make, starting back in 2014. Li’s team was looking to increase the smartphone camera zoom range and that lead them to a periscopic camera with a 3 times optical zoom from Hoya. It was the first of its kind.
Li’s team though couldn’t use it because Hoya’s supply chain was unfamiliar to Oppo. Plus, purely continuous zooms add many limitations, like the zoom range and package size. Going past 3x would take up more space because of the lens size
The team worked through many other cameras including a normal camera plus a 3x zoom periscope which achieved 5x. Eventually, they were able to boost the hybrid zoom range to 10x using a more powerful 5x zoom periscope. At the same time, they were able to achieve an f/3.0 aperture with two large D-cut lenses.
It’s an impressive journey and Engadget reports the phone “come in handy even at just the default 6x stop.” Though, they mention some issues past that. “Anything else beyond 6x often required several attempts before I could get a sharp enough shot, and jumping to 20x — a manual setting in the scroll bar as a last resort — would make things a lot more challenging.”
We hope Oppo can improve the performance there, but nevertheless, it is a huge feat for the company to challenge the likes of Huawei.
Image courtesy t3.com and techgarage.blog
