O iPhone 12 just came out, but the Apple already planning the next generations of your smartphone. One of the new features that the company intends to implement in its devices are cameras with periscope lenses.

The periscope camera may be being developed in partnership with Apple with Samsung, one of its main rivals in the market, but also a major commercial partner.

The South Korean company has implemented periscope lenses in its top-of-the-line smartphone, the Galaxy s20 ultra, allowing for an impressive 100x digital zoom. So the company has the expertise to help the Big Apple put the feature into its cameras.

A report from the DigiTimes highlights that the agreement is still far from being finalized and, at the moment, the companies only intend to collaborate to increase the performance of the cameras on their devices.

One point that favors the South Korean is that the giant recently purchased Corephotonis, a pioneer in the development of optical zoom for smartphones. The Israeli company even sued Apple and Samsung for violating the patent for periscope technology. But now, these patents belong to Samsung.

Periscope cameras

The lenses are arranged horizontally in the camera array of the device, perpendicular to the sensor, instead of directly above it as in a common zoom lens. Prisms and mirrors are used to redirect the light at 90º, making it pass through the lenses before reaching the sensor. Here, the function is to make the image reflect until it reaches the sensor enlarged.

The technology is a kind of evolution of traditional telephoto lenses on smartphones, promising a more advanced zoom and better quality of images captured from a distance.

The feature has been present in cell phones for some time, but the first record of the technology being used on a large scale in a smartphone was in Huawei P30 Pro, which had zoom with magnification of up to 50x. Now, the function should become popular with the entry of Apple and other companies in the periscope lens market.

Photo: Zhang Kaiyv / Pexels

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