Although it may no longer make big headlines, the race for the best camera in a mobile phone continues. Each manufacturer with a different approach, they all seek to have the highest quality scores, and the most advanced cameras. However, there is a significant drawback: they do not have infinite space.
The body of mobile phones quite limits the possibilities regarding the capabilities of your cameras. Over time, they have chosen to scrape some extra space by increasing the size across the width at the cost of the uniformity of the rear. But even so, it’s still difficult to introduce features like optical zoom.
One of the solutions that have started to be implemented to solve this problem, are the periscope lenses. These consist of a lens system placed in a horizontal position that, accompanied by a prism, allow the incorporation of a zoom of various magnifications. It is something that has been incorporated in the phones of other manufacturers, and that has given good results.
Recently, Apple has managed to patent a design for a camera with such a design. How they share from Patently apple, has the peculiarity that, Instead of having a single prism, it has two. In this way, the position of the sensor inside the device would not change.
This “folding camera”, which is how they refer to it from Apple, would be designed for the future iPhone 14. The 2022 model it is expected to have great advances in its cameras. And, precisely, one of them would be the incorporation of a multi-magnification optical zoom, made possible by a design like this.
As always, we need to take these patents with caution. They are documents that do not necessarily represent the future of Apple products. In fact, they may never appear. That’s not to say that it doesn’t give us some hope to see this long-awaited feature in the near future.