Nokia who are struggling to get traction Australia after a decade of being among the Countries top mobile brands was punting on six cameras to win over consumers with their new device, that was till Oppo launched their new 10X Zoom camera.
The new Nokia device launched at Mobile World Congress, has five rear cameras which executives from HMD the European Company who licensed the Nokia brand name claimed delivered “the richest image capture possible”.
The only problem was that Chinese Company Oppo revealed a smartphone that incorporates the world’s first 10x lossless zoom camera making the six camera Nokia redundant within hours.
While the Nokia camera can deliver up to 240-megapixel resolution the Oppo device delivers 10x lossless zoom without the need for a big and bulky retracting lens. Five of the Nokia cameras are each 12 megapixels and come with an infrared sensor for depth readings.
Experts have already warned HMD executives that the new Nokia may be a challenging device to market.
“Most store sales people are not that well trained when it comes to explaining the differences between one smartphone camera system and another,” explained Francisco Jeronimo from market research firm IDC.
“But this is not just about selling this device.
Called the Nokia 9 PureView was unveiled ahead of the start of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona and is tipped to sell in Australia for $899
The Nokia 9’s five cameras are each 12 megapixels and are complemented by an infrared sensor for depth readings.
Two cameras use a red-green-and-blue (RGB) sensor to capture colour. The other three are monochrome, allowing them to capture nearly three times as much light as there is no need to filter it for the different wavelengths.
The device then selects one of the colour shots to act as the primary image, and adds detail taken from the other stills.
At the launch of the device which was hours before the Oppo launch HMD executives said, “We can deliver significantly wider range than any other smartphone out there,”. Then along came Oppo.
Other features determine which parts of a photo to keep in focus and how blurred other sections should appear
In addition, the phone creates a depth map of the full scene made up of 1,200 planes ranging between 7cm and 40m.
The company says this compares favourably to competing high-end smartphones that only create 10-layer maps that only cover part of a shot.
The multi-camera set-up is based on technology developed by Light, a Silicon Valley start-up that released the L16 in 2017.
The 16-camera device aimed to offer the benefits of a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera in a much smaller package.
But reviews criticised it for producing inconsistent results with images that were sometimes badly stitched together, featured digital artefacts and suffered from depth-mapping errors.
It never sold well, but Light always suggested it was a stepping stone to bringing its know-how to smartphones.
The Nokia 9 tie-up appears to be the first handset to take advantage of this.
As for the new Oppo device their triple-lens camera consists of a 48MP main everyday shooter, followed by a 16mm 120-degree ultra-wide lens designed to take in more of whatever you’re trying to capture, and a telephoto lens. Together, these cameras cover a range of 16mm to 160mm, allowing users to take professional style photographs without the fear of loss of quality when zooming.
Oppo has managed to keep its triple-camera module to just 6.76mm thick, which should mean only a slight camera hump on the back of the final shipping handset.
