Hands on with OPPO's 10x zoom smartphone prototype

By Alex Choros

Last updated 28 February 2019

OPPO's big Mobile World Congress announcement was technology that will allow for up to 10x lossless zoom in its smartphone cameras. While you won't be able to get a smartphone featuring this camera setup until the second quarter of this year, the company already has a few working prototypes.

The tech that makes OPPO's lossless zoom possible is a triple camera setup includes a 120-degree ultra-wide angle lens with an equivalent focal length of 160mm, a 48MP primary lens, and a telephoto lens with an equivalent focal length of 160mm (OPPO has yet to confirm sensor-size on the zoom and ultra-wide angle). Moving between the ultra-wide angle lens and the telephoto lens gets you the 10x zoom factor.

OPPO's 10x solution makes use of a periscope design where the angle of the telephoto lens is rotated by 90 degrees. This allows for a deeper zoom without making a phone much thicker - OPPO says the module is only 6.76mm thick. A periscope-style prism is used to adjusts the path of the path of the light entering the camera to match that of the lens.

At OPPO's press event, it had a setup where you could use its prototype devices to snap photos of a city made of miniatures, but this wasn't exactly the best demonstration of the tech. Going between 1x magnification and 5x worked quite well, but moving toward 10x left photos quite blurry due to the focal length on the lens. There just wasn't enough distance between the phone and its subjects to get a sharp shot.

While I initially walked away a bit disappointed by the quality of the lossless zoom, I was able to get my hands on an untethered prototype and take a few shots in different environments. The difference was staggering. Even for an unfinished prototype, the OPPO device did a pretty good job of taking detailed shots of photos in the distance. You do however need to try and keep the phone as steady as you can - despite an optically stabilised zoom lens, hand shake can have a much more apparent effect on photos when shooting at a level of high magnification.

Here's a few samples from the prototype device comparing 1x and 10x zoom factors.

I've still got plenty of questions about how OPPO's zoom tech will perform in different, more diverse environments and lighting conditions, but I'm certainly looking forward to the seeing these capabilities in a market-ready phone.

WhistleOut travelled to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress as a guest of OPPO Australia