How far is the camera from the optical zoom?

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Smart-phone cameras have made great technological advances in recent years. The image quality is improved, and the noise and crosstalk of small size photosensitive elements are gradually reduced. Despite these enhancements, smartphones still have a congenital flaw in the camera function, which is that optical zoom is not supported. Recently, I have been trying to sum up an article is, professional camera photo function and what is the phone can not do? Optical zoom is the brunt.

Because of the technical difficulties of miniaturization of optical lenses, this has been the biggest bottleneck in mobile phone photos, but now there are a lot of relevant technology in advance. Optical zoom will be the next selling point for smartphone makers. Androidauthority the present technical achievements in this field are introduced

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Although Samsung's Galaxy Zoom has brought some special abilities to photographers, its bloated designs are a turnoff for other thinner smartphones. This also shows that traditional autofocus and zoom mechanisms are not suitable for the pursuit of slim smartphones. If handset makers want to provide a more competitive photographic experience, they need to seek new technological breakthroughs.

Among the patents registered by some technology companies, we also see a number of small space-consuming optical technologies that offer upgraded photo-taking and are more suited to the design needs of portable electronic devices. In the near future, the technology breakthrough of the new MEMS and high precision manufacturing technology will make the smart phone have the optical zoom ability to become a reality.

How Technology works

As you may have expected, Google is in the forefront of the development of a MEMS-based zoom lens. In 2012, they had registered the relevant technology patents. If you've looked at emerging technologies, such as the new production process for mobile displays, you might have seen the word MEMS. The full name of MEMS is a micro-electro-mechanical system that has been used in some camera modules to help with autofocus, and similar design principles apply to the development of MEMS optical zoom modules.

Google's patents refer to a component called the Alvarez Lens (Alvarez Lens), which is composed of two plates of varying power (thickness) and refractive grade. The movement and position change of the plate will change the total output power through the lens, and the light in it will be magnified or shrunk.

This may sound a bit complicated, but you just need to know that it's a way to create a zoom/focus without having to change the lens.

The next step is for MEMS to come in handy because of the small motors needed for the conversion of the lens parts and the adjustment of the magnification. As for the low power and small size requirements of portable electronic devices, piezoelectric motors can be well satisfied.

The biggest advantage of this technology is that small mobile devices, such as smartphones, can enjoy optical zoom without relying on digital zooming that will degrade image quality when magnified. Of course, there are some limitations to this design, that is, small lenses can achieve more limited magnification, while the focal length will be limited to a specific range. These lenses cannot be replaced or used in different modules, but this is also a price to pay for small size.

Google's design is not the only solution. The design, which uses flexible mirrors to achieve magnification, is also in the experiment, where the angle of the mirror and the focus of the lens can be controlled by a miniature motor. A design called Wavelens even uses a flexible film to dynamically adjust the shape and focus of the lens.

Focus Module for OEM

On the practical level, most of the technologies mentioned above can be technically compatible with the current wide range of OEM mobile image sensors. For companies such as HTC, Sony and Samsung, even as they begin to develop optical zoom technology, their efforts over the past few years to upgrade their image sensors are not wasted, as focus and magnification are controlled by lens modules.

For example, the 3.3 watt m3-f modules developed by Newscale Technologies are compatible with a wide range of image sensors and lens sizes, and can also be mounted on another image sensor printed circuit board. The specification of the module is 20x22x16mm, which is quite suitable for smartphones, and will not cause the rear cover of the device to protrude.

Although none of the smartphones are going to use small optical zoom modules in the short term, the upcoming Galaxy K seems to stick to more traditional camera design, but in the next few years we should start to hear more about the technology. The camera technology of smartphones is evolving, and it won't be long before we can distinguish between smart phones and card cameras.