Huawei confirms that P30 Pro will get periscopic camera lens

The Huawei P30 Pro gets a camera with a periscopic lens. The focal length or the zoom factor is not yet known, but Huawei claims that the camera will get something ‘that nobody has done yet’.

Photo taken with ‘zoom function’ P30 Pro

Huawei’s marketing chief Clement Wong confirms to Android Central that the Huawei P30 Pro will have a periscopic lens. Renders of the device already appeared last week, along with the rumor that the smartphone will be equipped with a camera with 10x optical zoom.

Wong says the lens provides ‘super zoom’, but does not provide concrete details. He does state that the P30 Pro will have a camera feature that is not yet available in any smartphone. Huawei CEO Richard Yu recently published a photo of the moon on the Chinese social network Weibo. That photo would have been taken with the zoom function of the P30 Pro.

Android Central speculates about the presence of a mechanical zoom. This is possible with a periscopic construction; Asus already showed this in 2016 with its Zenfone Zoom. However, such an optical zoom lens with moving parts is complicated to make and fragile.

Many manufacturers speak of optical zoom without actually using a zoom lens. They use multiple camera sensors with lenses of different focal lengths. For example, Oppo showed off a “10x zoom module” at Mobile World Congress, which consists of three sensors with lenses with full-frame equivalents of 16mm, 24mm and 160mm.

The zoom factor is determined by dividing the longest focal length by the shortest, so the Oppo module has 10x zoom. However, it is not a mechanical zoom lens that can also be set at all intermediate focal points. To show the steps between the different lenses, such modules work with digital zoom.

Huawei is organizing an event on March 26 at which it will present its P30 devices. When it was announced, there was already a strong hint to a zoom function.