Quick look at OPPO's 5x Precision Optical Zoom

OPPO may not have had a smartphone to show off here at MWC 2017, but instead, the company introduced some interesting technology that is a potential game changer for the industry with regards to a key aspect of the smartphone experience. Here is a quick look at OPPO’s 5x Precision Optical Zoom!

The 5X lossless zoom dual camera technology is a pretty incredible piece of engineering that OPPO spent nearly a year working on. Keep in mind though that the device you see in the video and the images are just a prototype, will not be coming to the market, and is here solely to show off the tech.

Just like many smartphone cameras that we’ve seen recently, OPPO’s 5x zoom technology leverages a dual camera setup. There is one wide angle lens and another telephoto lens, and the latter is what is used to make the magic happen.

The telephoto lens actually sits sideways inside the camera module, coupled with a prism that directs the light towards the lens, and this is what allows for it to have the space for a much deeper zoom. This periscope-like structure let OPPO keep the camera module very thin, with a thickness of just 5.7 mm, helping to avoid any unsightly camera bulge when this camera tech finally makes it to a smartphone. In fact, OPPO claims that it is 10% thinner than even the standard camera modules that offer 2x optical zoom.

With this dual-lens setup, you can zoom up to 5x without any loss in quality. Anything beyond that will obviously result in some deterioration, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail available when zooming in at 10x.

Something that typically happens when you zoom in is that it usually becomes much more difficult to keep the camera stable. To address this issue, OPPO has optical image stabilization directly built-in to both the telephoto lens and the prism itself, which allows for the lens to compensate for vibrations in real time. According to OPPO, this new OIS technology features a 40% improvement when compared to the previous generation.

There you have it for this quick look at OPPO’s Precision Optical Zoom technology! The big question is whether this tech will be seen soon in the US, given that OPPO doesn’t have a huge presence in that market. Regardless, this is a huge breakthrough for smartphone camera tech, and we are very excited to see this on a smartphone, either via OPPO themselves, or via licensing deals with other smartphone manufacturers.

What do you think of OPPO’s new 5x lossless zoom technology? Let us know in the comments section below, and stay tuned with Android Authority as we continue to bring you more great coverage from MWC 2017!