This article is from the WeChat public account: ifanr , author: Musi, from the title figure: Figure worm
Rectangular raised rear lens groups with densely arranged 3-5 cameras are likely to be the design of choice for most smartphones in 2020.
The recent news of new Samsung Galaxy S11, Huawei P40 and OnePlus 8 basically foreshadows this. It can also be seen from the renderings that their backs have a raised rectangular area, which is obviously used to place the rear lens group.
Of course, before them, many domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers have launched similarly designed products.
The earliest Huawei Mate 20 Pro, for example, arranged the rear three lenses and flashes in a matrix, and packed them into a black square area.
As for this year’s iPhone 11 Pro series, the new rear three cameras are arranged in a triangle, and then placed in a rectangle in the upper left corner.
This year, Google, which has been pursuing algorithms to improve mobile phone imaging, chose to introduce a dual-camera structure in the Pixel 4 generation, and also used a black rectangular module.
For a time, the rectangular lens group seems to have become a new design trend for the entire mobile phone industry. After all, with the test of head manufacturers such as Apple and Huawei, other brands also feel that consumers will have higher acceptance of this appearance.
Even if the cost is not enough to use so many lenses, it does not prevent some small brands from using the blind eye method to complete the look of the new iPhone.
On Taobao, you can even see lens films of various colors, in order to disguise the old iPhone as new products such as 11 Pro, and there is no shortage of people.
Our aesthetic tendency seems to have been forcibly changed again by big companies. Like Liu Haiping or the raised lens of the year, these things often become the normal state of the entire industry after half a year.
But in terms of camera design, Yuba is not the most radical solution that smartphone manufacturers have tried.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom launched in 2013
In the era when most mobile phones are still using a single camera, Samsung once introduced a phone called the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Try to move the telescopic lens on the camera directly to the phone to get better picture quality and Imaging.
Similarly, Sony Xperia has also launched a QX30 external lens accessory, which further expands the use of this telescopic lens group. You can even directly transfer camera lenses with the same mount.
But this idea of imitating the traditional camera design has not formed a wave in the mobile phone market.
The reason is that the telescopic lens still has a great impact on the appearance of the mobile phone. Some consumers are even reluctant to admit that this is a mobile phone, but a camera with a communication function, thus eliminating the purchase idea.
This also forced manufacturers to return to the mobile phone itself, while not as much as damaging the appearance of the product, with the help of more cameras to complete the work that could have been solved with a single telescoping lens. Focal coverage.
You can even see the “periscope lens group”, a solution that uses a horizontal structure and uses the refraction of the light path to break the focus limit of the mobile phone. Ingenuity.
On the other hand, with the rapid development of social networks, consumer demand for photos is also increasing. Some people want to shoot super wide-angle landscape photos, some people want more stable zoom performance, and some people want to pursue portrait blurring effects similar to SLR cameras, which are not solved by a single camera.
So, although the multi-camera structure has led to some appearances that are contrary to traditional cognition, the idea itself has not caused much opposition.
After all, it only sacrifice part of the appearance, so that users get a photographic experience comparable to traditional cameras. Compared to the 3.5mm headphone jack that was cut off, or the design choices such as bangs and water drop screen, which are not quite equal, the controversy they naturally suffer will be more than that of the matrix lens.
The leaker OnLeaks voted and found that users who hate the design of matrix lenses did not expect as much.
Sometimes, mobile phone users tooThe direct beneficiary of the multi-camera structure, “If it can take the photos and videos I want, who cares about its ugliness? I can’t see it anyway.” People with similar ideas are not in the minority. .
Picture from: Android Police
For manufacturers, the camera lens group is also a competitive point that can highlight differentiation. As the most visible external component of the mobile phone other than the screen, it is not like the processor or memory hidden inside the fuselage. Its size and number can be intuitively perceived by users, even the most obvious appearance of some new and old models. difference.
At the same time, compared to memory and batteries, cameras are now one of the few mobile phone components that can maintain high-speed iteration.
Thanks to the efforts of upstream suppliers. At the Snapdragon Summit a while ago, Qualcomm said that the new generation of the flagship chip Snapdragon 865 supports a processing speed of 2 billion pixels per second, and can take photos up to 200 million pixels or record videos up to 8K / 30fps.
Sony, which is responsible for the production of image sensors, also said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that due to the shortage of camera modules, Sony’s production plant will not be shut down this Christmas holiday. But even with 24-hour continuous operation, the existing capacity is likely to be unable to meet the current market demand.
Using the periscope lens group can overcome the physical limitation caused by the thickness of the mobile phone and achieve a longer shooting focal length
To date, the flagship phones of major mobile phone manufacturers have basically come with a troika combination of “wide-angle, telephoto and ultra-wide-angle”, and some have even introduced 2 telephoto lenses for further improvement. Imaging of key scenes such as portraits and telephotos; some rely on special lenses such as macro and ToF to expand their functions.
Under new publicity phrases such as “X-megapixels” and “XX-times lossless zoom”, shooting the moon, shooting stars, and tall buildings have become the scenes that mobile phone manufacturers like to show off. Even if some function gimmicks mean more, but the progress reflected in the hardware level is obviously not as simple as the number of cameras and pixel numbers we have seen.
Will the camera lens continue to increase? We’re afraid we can’t conclude yet. Honestly, the rear combination of many flagships can now cover most focal lengths, and it also gives a good solution to the core needs of day and night imaging and video recording.
But in the long run, in addition to taking pictures and recording videos, mobile phone cameras also carry more expectations.
There are also companies in the industry that specialize in multi-camera photo solutions, such as Light
For example, the capture of 3D information in the scene by ToF lens will effectively enhance our existing AR experience. This may seem useless, but considering the prospect of AR glasses in the future, it can also be regarded as a preliminary technical reserve.
At the same time, in the current mobile phone imaging, various image algorithms, AI processing and other technologies have also become more and more important. They not only allow the mobile phone camera to jump out of its own physical boundary, but also allow us to go deeper into the vision In the technical field, information extraction, analysis and understanding are carried out around a single sheet or a series of images.
For manufacturers, as long as the hardware still has the possibility of progress, the progress of mobile phone cameras seems to be an endless thing; as for consumers, as long as the new technology can lower the photographic threshold and get better Photos and more interesting new abilities, it seems that the question of design can also be ignored.
Even if you don’t like it, returning to the single-shot era is probably not a good choice.
This article is from the WeChat public account: ifanr author: Moose