Samsung just patented a new smartphone design, and I’m ready to buy it right now
Samsung just patented a new smartphone design, and I’m ready to
buy it right now
- A patent filing has been published that purports to show a new Samsung phone with a much-improved camera setup.
- The idea shown in this patent is to bring a six-camera array (including five wide-angle lenses and a zoom camera) possibly to a new Samsung Galaxy phone.
- The patent documentation was published late last week.
It’s always fascinating to watch how Samsung
continues to push its camera technology forward in new releases of its Galaxy
smartphones, as it continues to do with each generation. For example, the South
Korea-based tech giant is getting closer to the holy
grail of smartphone design — the placement of a camera
underneath a phone display to eliminate the need for a notch or a hole-punch
selfie camera. Also on the camera front, meanwhile, the company has just
patented a design for a new phone that sports a six-fold camera setup, which
includes five wide-angle cameras and one zoom camera.
Samsung applied for this patent from the
World Intellectual Property Office back in December, and the 55-page
documentation for the patent was published late last week.
Dutch tech news blog LetsGoDigital spotted
the filing, which is perhaps more interesting for the fact that Samsung’s idea
here relies on moveable/tilting camera sensors, and not just on the basis of
the number of sensors that are included.
As envisioned, this new Samsung phone calls
for five wide-angle cameras with a focal length of 28mm, along with at least
one telephoto lens. Per LetsGoDigital,
an LED flash supplements the camera array, and each sensor can also point in
one direction “and then optimize the array configuration using image algorithms.”
Why is this interesting? Well, by using
moveable camera sensors you can do things like capture a panoramic image with a
blurred or “bokeh” effect, which is something you can’t do with current Samsung
phones. The Dutch site goes on to note that the benefits of this setup include
better photos even in poor light situations, as well as superb focus, and
higher dynamic range (HDR), according to the patent documentation.
In terms of what else is envisioned that this
kind of array could do, the sensors are shown as being able to tilt independent
of each other, depending on what the user wants. The camera setup can also
produce time-synchronized image frames, which is extra nice when capturing
video with a high frame rate.
What we see above points to a future for smartphones
that’s less reliant on the number of megapixels associated with a camera and
more on lens quality and sensor size, with a growing emphasis on being able to
shoot much crisper and detailed images even in conditions when the lighting is
sub-par. Manufacturers like Nikon and Canon have been using tilt and shift
technology in their cameras for a while now, so it’s interesting to see it
coming into our smartphones, as well — though we still don’t have official word
from Samsung when it might bring tilting image sensors to a Galaxy smartphone.
For now, we’ll have to be satisfied with letting this patent filing intrigue us
about what’s to come.
Andy is a reporter in Memphis who
also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When he’s not
writing about technology, he can be found hunched protectively over his
burgeoning collection of vinyl, as well as nursing his Whovianism and bingeing
on a variety of TV shows you probably don’t like.
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