New patent suggests Samsung is perhaps engaged on an interchangeable lens telephone

A lately found patent suggests Samsung is perhaps engaged on a telephone with interchangeable digicam lenses. The patent diagrams present a specially-designed machine housing, together with a distinctly separate lens part. How the lens would connect to the telephone stays to be seen, however a magnetic system would appear the only and simplest way. Curiously, the patent additionally mentions a motor or actuator being current, enabling the motion of the sensor or lens meeting. The exact function of this is not but specified, nevertheless it could possibly be required for lens focussing or optical zoom, or if it have been for use to maneuver the sensor, then it is attainable the actuator is there for the needs of sensor-shift picture stabilization.

Assuming Samsung was to design a system appropriate with a choice of totally different lens modules, a technique of lens-body communication can be needed for the telephone to establish which lens is connected. Once more, the patent does not go into element about how this may be achieved, however there are a variety of attainable choices: a easy magnet contained inside the lens meeting could possibly be used to speak the lens kind to the telephone. Alternatively, an RFID chip within the lens could possibly be scanned by the telephone’s antenna, or one other resolution could also be a reflector/resistor. As soon as the telephone has the required lens knowledge, it might then alter digicam settings accordingly.

Separate, interchangeable lenses for digicam telephones do exist already. The modular CMF Telephone 2 Professional might be fitted with add-on lenses, whereas Vivo‘s newest flagship telephone, the X200 Extremely, has been designed to work with an enormous 13-element, 8.7x zoom Zeiss telephoto add-on lens. Then there are aftermarket firms like Second which supply a variety of add-on lenses that may be connected to its telephone circumstances for iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy telephones.

However within the age of AI, will we really need an interchangeable lens telephone? Till pretty lately, this may occasionally have been seen as an enormous leap ahead for telephone images, addressing the restrictions of the essentially small lenses required to suit inside a slim telephone physique. Nevertheless, with AI-enhanced zoom working together with a periscope digicam, a telephone can now seize pictures at very lengthy focal lengths with little lack of picture high quality. Extensive-angle pictures are already lined by the devoted, built-in ultra-wide module, leaving no need for added interchangeable lenses to cowl different focal lengths.

That stated, now that rival Android telephone producers are providing interchangeable lenses, no matter their precise real-world usefulness, Samsung is evidently contemplating methods to make its telephones equally attention-grabbing. And given the underwhelmingly incremental digicam enhancements supplied by latest flagship Galaxy telephones, we will see why Samsung may need future S-series telephones to be somewhat extra thrilling.