Microscopes and liquid lenses – New camera hardware appears in phones
It would be too much of an honor to say that smartphones are all about the cameras, but it’s an important part anyway. The operating system is Android or iOS, you have a large screen with small bezels and a design of metal and glass or plastic, with some variations around it. You can try to differentiate yourself with speed or specs, but the cameras are the main point of distinction.
No wonder then that there is a race to bring new features in smartphone cameras to the market. Take market leader Samsung; it came with the 108-megapixel camera in the Galaxy S20 Ultra last year, for example , which uses information from nine pixels for one pixel in the photo. Huawei introduced a camera sensor with yellow color filters instead of green in the P30 Pro the year before , while OPPO then debuted the periscopic, rotated zoom in the Reno 10x Zoom .
That begs the question of what we’ve seen in terms of new camera hardware this year. There are certainly innovations: from smartphones with the sensor of a compact camera to liquid lenses. We describe the latest developments in smartphone cameras.
The sensor of a compact camera
In February we wrote about the steps towards large sensors on smartphones and this month the time had come. Sharp showed a phone with a 1″ sensor in Japan . For comparison, a compact camera with a large sensor is also 1″. The second largest sensor in a smartphone is 1/1.12″.
| Phone | Year | Sensor | Resolution | Surface | Optical format |
| Sharp Aquos R6 | 2021 | – | 20Mp | 122mm² | 1/1″ |
| Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra | 2021 | Samsung GN2 | 50Mp | 98mm² | 1/1.12″ |
| Nokia 808 PureView | 2012 | – | 41Mp | 80mm² | 1/1.2″ |
| Huawei P40 Pro | 2020 | Sony IMX700 | 50Mp | 74mm² | 1/1.28″ |
| Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra | 2021 | Samsung HM3 | 108Mp | 69mm² | 1/1.33″ |
| OnePlus 8 Pro | 2020 | Sony IMX689 | 48Mp | 60mm² | 1/1.43″ |
| Nokia Lumia 1020 | 2013 | – | 41Mp | 51mm² | 1/1.5″ |
| Samsung Galaxy A71 | 2020 | Samsung GW1 | 64Mp | 43mm² | 1/1.73″ |
| Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max | 2020 | – | 12Mp | 34mm² | 1/1.9″ |
| Samsung Galaxy A51 | 2020 | Samsung GM1 | 48Mp | 31mm² | 1/2.0″ |
| Apple iPhone 12 Pro | 2020 | – | 12Mp | 24mm² | 1/2.5″ |
| Google Pixel 4a | 2020 | Sony IMX363 | 12Mp | 24mm² | 1/2.5″ |
It is not the first smartphone with a 1″ sensor, because that was the Panasonic CM1 from 2013. The difference is that the Panasonic phone was quite out of place at the time, while this Sharp phone continues an earlier trend of increasingly larger sensors.
Then the sensor itself. That’s a bit of digging, because Sharp doesn’t give much away on its own site. We were able to find some striking details about the sensor. First, it’s not a 4:3 sensor, as many smartphones have, but a 3:2 one. The resolution is 5472×3648 pixels, which brings you to 19.96 megapixels. Pixels are 2.4 microns in size. The most logical producer for the sensor is Sony. After all, Sharp is a Japanese company with a smartphone camera for the Japanese market. Purchasing the sensor from a Japanese supplier then makes sense. In addition, Sharp has previously purchased from Sony for its smartphones. In addition, Sony has been making a 1″ sensor with a 3:2 ratio for years. Sony’s own compact cameras of yesteryear had such a sensor in the housing and Sony has been supplying such a sensor for industrial applications for some time now.
Furthermore, it is a camera with a 19mm lens in 35mm equivalent. So it falls between the regular and ultra-wide-angle cameras of other smartphones. Primary cameras of smartphones often have a focal length between 24 and 28mm, while ultra-wide-angle lenses often end up between 12 and 17mm. The aperture is f/1.9. It’s a lens with Leica Summicron branding, but it’s unknown exactly what that means in practice.
It’s the only camera on the back. On the front is a more traditional 12-megapixel camera for selfies, but it is not innovative in any way. The Aquos R6 is only intended for the Japanese market. Whether and when a phone with this sensor will be released in Europe is unknown.
The liquid lens
The Xiaomi Mix Fold , or Mi Mix Fold, is the first smartphone with a liquid lens. It’s about the camera with ‘zoom lens’. The liquid lens allows it to perform two functions. It can provide an image that is 3x magnified compared to the primary camera, or it can serve as a macro lens. The focal point is therefore not adjusted, only the focus. That’s special; some phones use the ultra-wide-angle camera as a macro lens, but they often don’t get that close and they have a much wider view. Focusing close with a telephoto lens is something that standard smartphones cannot do.
The liquid lens works like this: the lens, like any camera lens, consists of several parts, but one of them is made of a transparent liquid. A teardown by Yasir Kay shows that it is an oily substance.
The software can adjust the shape of the lens by applying a little tension to it. With the modified shape, the light refracts differently and therefore falls on the lens in a different way. This makes it possible to switch between focusing far away and very close: 3cm distance, the manufacturer claims. We have not yet been able to test this phone ourselves.
Xiaomi says it has developed the technology itself, but more precise details than this are not yet available. The manufacturer mentions its own image signal processor Surge C1 on its product page rather than the liquid lens when it comes to cameras. The technique of liquid lenses is not new. With a little imagination you could say that the technique of liquid lenses has been in development since 1678 . Truly liquid lenses with water and oil have also been around for decades. Where it is new is on phones.
Exactly how and why Xiaomi chose the liquid lens in this model is unknown. The Mix Fold is an experimental phone that will only appear in China and, due to the high price, probably in a relatively small edition. Xiaomi has more than enough expensive phones that could have used this camera, such as the Mi 11 Ultra, Mi 11i and Mi 11, but they all contain more traditional smartphone cameras.
The added value is currently limited. Many phones have a separate macro camera or, as mentioned, fulfill that function with the camera with an ultra-wide angle lens. A camera with an 80mm telephoto lens is nothing special anymore.
The microscopic macro lens
Speaking of getting objects very close, OPPO has put a special camera on its Find X3 Pro for this. Unlike the Mix Fold, this is a model that is released in many countries and it is also the most important device in the line-up of the Chinese manufacturer. The phone no longer has a periscopic telephoto camera like its predecessors Find X2 Pro and Reno 10x Zoom.
The manufacturer tells us that there were a few major challenges in making the microscope camera. That starts with the glass. That should be able to stay very clean. “This has been achieved by treating the glass with a custom cleaning solution, which makes it more than ten times more resistant to tiny specks and hair particles,” says the manufacturer. The lens is also not attached to the motherboard, but is incorporated in the back of the phone itself.
Then the light: with a focus distance of 3cm, extra light is needed. The ring light consists of two LED lights that have been adjusted in terms of color temperature and brightness, among other things. “A
standard flash module would be too big and too bright, resulting in uneven lighting.” The light guide is a semi-transparent ink that appears black and had to be just opaque enough for the light to reach the sensor in the right way. OPPO does not disclose technical details of the sensor.
Unlike the Mix Fold and Sharp Aquos R6, we were able to try this phone. It works, as can be read in the review . “Once you’ve mastered how it works and you’ve found a good subject, you can take great shots with the microscope camera that you couldn’t make with any other smartphone (without tools) until now.” Whether this is more than a fancy trick remains the question. “The results are sometimes fascinating to look at, although we do wonder how many users will continue to shoot with them after a week.” The lens has an aperture of f/3.0, the focal length is 1.24mm. Photos come out in square format, 1944×1944 pixels. Even with the ring light on, the iso isn’t too low: usually around 1000 or even slightly higher.
Conclusion
These are the examples we were able to find of new techniques in this year’s phones. The biggest name in the smartphone market is missing: Samsung. That decided to mainly refine his camera technique this year. With Hasselblad, OnePlus has a new name on the camera housing of the 9 and 9 Pro.
Apple did come up with something new on the iPhone 12 Pro Max last year: optical image stabilization with sensor shift. Instead of moving the lens, the entire sensor moves to compensate for movement. With the sensor being lighter than the lens, stabilization should be better, further helping to improve light sensitivity. The device can use slower shutter speeds in low light.
All this camera violence makes it clear that smartphone manufacturers are keen to distinguish themselves by capturing images. This has two possible advantages. For smaller players like Sharp, it is possible to put themselves in the spotlight and thus perhaps get a wider audience. Larger players are also trying to do the same and use these kinds of techniques to persuade you to choose a phone from their brand instead of one from a competitor.
Not all of these innovations will return to phones in the coming years. The fact that OPPO has abandoned the periscopic telephoto lens after being the first to market it itself is significant. If the brand can no longer distinguish itself with it, it is apparently no longer necessary.
It is clear that this is a knockout race for camera hardware. Which inventions keep coming back in new models and which ones are dropped? What are the gimmicks and what are the keepers? It’s hard to predict that. The ultra-wide-angle camera from the 2016 LG G5 proved to be a keeper, as did the auxiliary camera from the HTC One M8 from 2014. Many camera gimmicks did not return, such as the 3D cameras of the HTC Evo 3D and LG Optimus 3D from 2011, the many cameras of the Nokia 9 Pureview from 2019 and so on. That race is far from over. As long as cameras are an important way for smartphone makers to differentiate themselves, they will continue to focus on them.