While LG has officially exited the smartphone market, the company is still involved in the manufacture of smartphone screens and other spare parts. Now, the South Korean brand has announced that it has developed a new camera module that could solve one of the biggest problems of modern flagship smartphones. LG Innotek has now developed a compact camera module for smartphones that can offer true optical zoom up to 9x on a smartphone.
What makes it even more interesting is the fact that LG has partnered with Qualcomm to optimize its latest camera module for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. Will we see LG Innotek’s new camera sensor on some of the upcoming smartphones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC? That is not clear at the moment.
LG will officially unveil the new camera module at the CES 2023 tech show, and we could also expect early prototypes featuring LG’s new telephoto lens with a 4x to 9x optical zoom capability. At the moment, Sony is the only brand making true optical zoom-capable camera sensors for smartphones, and with this announcement, LG joins the club.
From a technical point of view, the special telephoto lens from LG has a movable lens unit with OIS or optical image stabilization. The camera unit is very compact compared to other telephoto lenses and also offers a 200mm equivalent zoom. This camera sensor is expected to be able to perform small and precise movements of 1 μm, and a smartphone with only this sensor can offer different levels of optical zoom with a single camera module.
This is LG’s first optical zoom smartphone camera sensor, and the technology is expected to be limited to high-end flagship smartphones. Just like Android flagships, iPhones are also said to get a periscope zoom lens, and Apple could use a variation of that on the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro model.
