While LG’s days of manufacturing smartphones may be passed, LG Innotek, a significant supplier of mobile camera components, is still operating. At CES 2023, it will debut a new telephoto zoom camera module with genuine, continuous optical zoom. The business is collaborating with Qualcomm to accelerate the adoption of its innovative technology in conjunction with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in forthcoming top Android phones.
LG’s design employs moving lenses, similar to a classic DSLR camera lens, which retains picture detail, in contrast to most other long smartphone cameras that use image-quality-degrading digital zoom to go beyond their natural focal length. This camera module also employs a folded-optic design, often known as a periscope lens, to reduce total size. As a consequence, the lens has a 4-9x zoom range with real optical zoom in between.
So far, Sony is the only major manufacturer to provide a smartphone with genuine optical zoom, but Oppo is also developing one. The 3.5-5.2x lens on Sony’s Xperia 1 IV is comparable to 85-125mm, which is far shorter than the new telephoto module LG is demonstrating — it might span an equivalent range of 100mm to more than 200mm. In my testing, the Xperia 1 IV’s narrower zoom range reduced that zoom lens’s utility significantly. Participants in MKBHD’s annual blind smartphone camera test concurred that Sony’s picture quality is only behind the competition.
Additionally, this new LG design has optical stabilisation, which is essential if you want to snap photos at 200mm. The module moves lens elements for zooming using a small, highly accurate actuator; the firm claims it can move in 1m increments. LG also claims that this approach would enable phone makers to incorporate fewer total lenses on the rear of their smartphones. Instead of integrating a 4x and a 9x lens, this design blends the two to take up less space and use less power.
The camera module will help LG Innotek “solidify the worldwide No. 1 position in the smartphone camera module industry,” according to the company’s press statement. It already has a solid position, largely due to its most important customer: Apple. While the iPhone 15 is unlikely to contain a folded-optic telephoto lens, LG seems ready to incorporate its camera technology across a variety of 2023 flagship phones.
