New Huawei Phone Has a 5x Optical Zoom, Thanks To a Periscope Lens (arstechnica.com) 88
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Huawei officially announced the Huawei P30 Pro smartphone today. While it has a new Huawei-made SoC, an in-screen optical fingerprint reader, and lots of other high-end features, the highlight is definitely the camera's optical zoom, which is up to a whopping 5x. Not digital zoom. Real, optical zoom. Space, of course, is at a premium in smartphones. Imagine a smartphone sitting face down, and you would have to fit a vertical stack of the display, the CMOS sensor, and the lens all in about an 8mm height. There is just not a lot of room. But what if we didn't have to stack all the components vertically? The trick to Huawei's 5x optical zoom is that it uses a periscope design.
From the outside, it looks like a normal camera setup, albeit with a funky square camera opening. Internally, though, the components make a 90-degree right turn after the lens cover, and the zoom lens components and CMOS sensor are arranged horizontally. Now instead of having to cram a bunch of lenses and the CMOS chip into 8mm of vertical phone space, we have acres of horizontal phone space to play with. We've seen prototypes of periscope cameras from Oppo, but as far as commercial devices go, the Huawei P30 Pro is the first. While the optical zoom is the big new camera feature, there are four total cameras on the back of the P30 Pro. A 40MP main camera, a 20MP wide angle, the 8MP 5X telephoto, and a Time of Flight depth-sensing camera. The main 40MP camera uses a 1/1.7 inch-type sensor that, when measured diagonally, would make it 32 percent larger than the 1/2.55 inch-type sensors in the Galaxy S10 or iPhone XS. The P30 Pro also has a new "RYYB" pixel layout, which swaps out the two green pixels in most CMOS "RGGB" sensors for yellow pixels. "Huawei claims it can capture 40 percent more light, as the yellow filter captures green and red light," Ars Technica reports. "Of course, this will make the color wonky, but Huawei claims it can correct for that in software."
Other specifications include a Kirin 980 octa-core processor with 6GB or 8GB RAM, up to 512GB storage, IP68 water and dust resistance, NFC, wireless charging, 40W wired charging, and a 4,200mAh battery. It starts at a price of $1,125.
From the outside, it looks like a normal camera setup, albeit with a funky square camera opening. Internally, though, the components make a 90-degree right turn after the lens cover, and the zoom lens components and CMOS sensor are arranged horizontally. Now instead of having to cram a bunch of lenses and the CMOS chip into 8mm of vertical phone space, we have acres of horizontal phone space to play with. We've seen prototypes of periscope cameras from Oppo, but as far as commercial devices go, the Huawei P30 Pro is the first. While the optical zoom is the big new camera feature, there are four total cameras on the back of the P30 Pro. A 40MP main camera, a 20MP wide angle, the 8MP 5X telephoto, and a Time of Flight depth-sensing camera. The main 40MP camera uses a 1/1.7 inch-type sensor that, when measured diagonally, would make it 32 percent larger than the 1/2.55 inch-type sensors in the Galaxy S10 or iPhone XS. The P30 Pro also has a new "RYYB" pixel layout, which swaps out the two green pixels in most CMOS "RGGB" sensors for yellow pixels. "Huawei claims it can capture 40 percent more light, as the yellow filter captures green and red light," Ars Technica reports. "Of course, this will make the color wonky, but Huawei claims it can correct for that in software."
Other specifications include a Kirin 980 octa-core processor with 6GB or 8GB RAM, up to 512GB storage, IP68 water and dust resistance, NFC, wireless charging, 40W wired charging, and a 4,200mAh battery. It starts at a price of $1,125.
Dunno about these multi lense cameras. (Score:2)
I own and really really like my fairly new Huawei Mate 20 (non Pro, curved displays can DIE!)
There's many great features on the phone, I like having an IR port, I have headphone, massive battery, very fast, notification LED.
It has allmost all the old original Android features that first wooooed me from Apple (which most idiot handset manufacturers are now removing to copy Apple....)
HOWEVER this phone, replaced a 2015 Samsung Note 5. Yet the camera's much like the p30, cameras everywhere,..... Those cameras?
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly they removed the headphone jack from the P30 Pro.
Re: Dunno about these multi lense cameras. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
These devices are always a pick and choose feature game. There are some features that are too geeky to appeal to most customers, such as the IR port, sure you can use your phone to change your TV Channel, But you will need to find the right software for your phone to match you TV, plus it is a device that will be draining phantom power that may not be used too much. The notification LED while seems like a good idea, and it probably was at the time, however we get too many notifications for it to be handy.
Re: (Score:2)
You can control which applications can use the notification LED. Slide the notification a little way left or right so that it reveals the cog icon, tap that and you can disable LED flashing. That way you can reserve the LED for important stuff you actually want to know about at a glance.
Battery size is largely dictated by screen size. Every phone has to be thin so the screen dimensions determine the battery dimensions which determine the capacity, beyond some gradual increases in energy density.
For point-an
Is Social Credit app preloaded? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
work for eternity in an Amazon warehouse for 7 Zimbabwean dollar an hour
Seems fair. That's at least twice what McDonalds is paying.
How are the medical benefits?
Re: And how does it ... (Score:5, Funny)
It delivers excellent results when photographing engineering documents and prototypes. They never tested it on anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
It will be interesting to see how it does on benchmarks like DXO Mark vs how people perceive it. Their high end phones tend to be tuned for benchmark performance, their mid range ones tend to be a little on the bright side because in side-by-side comparisons people usually pick the brighter image.
The zoom is incredible on this thing. Not just the fact that they managed to build it, but that it's reasonably stable in a hand-held device. Normally with 50x zoom you would need a tripod for stability, even if th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
so? I don't live in China, wtf do I care that they know about my sexual fantasies of Xi and Winnie the Pooh?
You should worry about your OWN government spying on you, because it's them who can actually have any sort of meaningful impact on your life.
Re: (Score:2)
During the last election cycles, we have had the Russian government using data collected from social media, to determine our political stances. Then make targeted advertisements, and reach outs to make sure the thing that we fear about the other side is exploited, and done to the other side, so we end up with what we have now. Groups of people hating each other, because each side is afraid that the other is trying to change their way of life and oppress them.
I want my rulers to know what my pain points in m
Trick? (Score:4, Informative)
Asus ZenFone Zoom.
Re: (Score:3)
Also the FujiFilm FinePix used a similar periscope design.
Re: (Score:2)
2006 Panasonic Lumix TZ1 anyone?
https://www.dpreview.com/artic... [dpreview.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Loved my DiMage x20, still working after all those years. Surprised it's taken so long to reach phones.
Re: (Score:1)
Meh, so Huawei is offering a whole 16$ of value on a new 1000$+ phone?
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Univer... [www.ebay.ca]
Optical zoom? Or fixed telephoto? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the periscope (Score:2)
I haven't seen the Huawei in action, but the way it used to work in old compact point-and-shoot it that the variable focal length happens by having the lens move around inside the periscope, instead of having them move in the external objective like on bigger photo cameras.
We'll have to wait until iFixit does a disassembly to see if indeed the lens are moving inside or whether it's only a telephoto with fixed focal length as you suggest and unlike every other thing of this kind that came before it.
Re:In the periscope (Score:5, Informative)
Nah this one is just a fixed 125mm-equivalent telephoto lens. So 5x isn't really accurate in the traditional sense but since the phone also has a wide-angle lens (and sensor), that's what it's relative to.
And it kind of makes sense because the end result from the end-user's point of view is the same - they press a button and the image zooms in, it's just achieved by blending the images from the different cameras rather than physically moving some lens elements.
Re: (Score:2)
I, for one, would like to be the first to welcome our very short baseline interferometric overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Optical zoom? Or fixed telephoto? (Score:2)
Other than changing the axis of the camera's focal length, allowing for much more room?
Hint: phones are much taller than they are deep, and all these manufacturers refuse to make phones thicker, which means a periscope design solves a lot of requirements issues.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a zoom lens, but the software seamlessly blends images from multiple cameras to allow the user to zoom in. Of course all phones have a digital zoom feature but here because they have the 5x telephoto camera they can go that far optically and then add digital zoom on top to produce pretty decent results all the way to 50x.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't even read the summary, why are you asking questions? And why are people reading your post and modding it insightful, when they didn't even read the summary either?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
help explain please (Score:2, Interesting)
What is the difference between 40MP with 5X digital zoom and 8MP with 5X optical zoom (or telephoto in this case it seems)?
Wouldn't you get about the same result?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
What is the difference between 40MP with 5X digital zoom and 8MP with 5X optical zoom (or telephoto in this case it seems)?
Photo sensors are square not linear. 40MP with 5x digital zoom is only 1.6MP. This is why digital zoom sucks even with a high pixel count.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's a real zoom lens with elements that move in and out.
The trick is that the camera sensor isn't the one at the back, it's the little square below it housing a mirror. If you hold the phone in portrait mode, the camera sensor
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's a real zoom lens with elements that move in and out.
The trick is that the camera sensor isn't the one at the back, it's the little square below it housing a mirror. If you hold the phone in portrait mode, the camera sensor is actually looking sideways, so the lens elements can move left and right inside the phone, and the mirror makes it so it can see out the back.
The elements obviously move to focus, but I don't see any indication the lens zooms. The image on the story page only indicates "5X Telephoto Lens (125mm) f3.4", which seems to indicate a fixed 125mm lens.
not so far-fetched (Score:4, Insightful)
The P30 Pro also has a new "RYYB" pixel layout, which swaps out the two green pixels in most CMOS "RGGB" sensors for yellow pixels. "Huawei claims it can capture 40 percent more light, as the yellow filter captures green and red light," Ars Technica reports. "Of course, this will make the color wonky, but Huawei claims it can correct for that in software."
That's essentially what your retina does. The red and green photosensors (more accurately called L for "long-wave" and M for "medium-wave") have spectral sensitivity that largely overlap; it is the relative difference that gets resolved into red and green percepts (after a lot of additional processing).
So, yep, use high sensitivity sensors that mostly overlap in sensitivity, and then correct it in software. That's what your visual system does!
Minolta throwback (Score:3)
I'd wondered when this was coming for cell phone cameras. I had a Minolta DiMAGE X back in the day, it had a periscope lens with not just a fixed 5x telephoto, but a 3x zoom that moved inside the body sideways.
https://www.dpreview.com/artic... [dpreview.com]
I await the day they don't use 3 separate lenses/sensors and do something like this in a cell phone.
Sam
What's old is new, what's new is old! (Score:2)
Patents expire (Score:2)
The DiMAGE X shipped 17 years ago. How likely is it that Huawei was sitting on this one for a couple years, waiting for Sony's patents to run out? (Sony bought Konica Minolta's camera unit in 2006.)
Re: (Score:3)
But this one is ... ON THE INTERNET (Score:2)
http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Minolta_DiMAGE_X [camera-wiki.org]
But the Huawei is on a smartphone !
and uses RYYB instead of RGGB !
(== hopefully that will be enough to avoid triggering some old patent and getting an injunction blocking the import of our phone in the patent-friendly countries such as US).
Part of a Bigger Conspiracy?? (Score:1)
But wait... what if the insane camera quality in the phone was strategically added by Huawei so that they can leak even higher quality images to the Chinese government??
This is Corephotonics' technology (Score:5, Informative)
Corephotonics, an Israeli startup, holds several patents on this tech. It was first seen in the Oppo phone, and now the P30.
However, Corephotonics was acquired by Samsung 2 months ago for $155M, so this might be the last non-Samsung phone to have this technology.
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/02/huawei-p30-pro-quad-camera-teased.html
Superb! (Score:3)
Comes with a scuba diving case, you say? I will just wait for mine to be stolen... maybe book another trip to Barcelona where things magically vanish from your pockets.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All the better to spy on you with, my dear! (Score:2)
Ahh the coolpix approach! Loved that camera! (Score:2)
https://www.dpreview.com/artic... [dpreview.com]