Samsung’s Special Interest

Samsung Galaxy models after Galaxy S8 are expected to be equipped with a dual camera.
Samsung Galaxy models after Galaxy S8 are expected to be equipped with a dual camera.

 

Samsung’s interest in dual lens cameras is growing day by day. Samsung Venture Investment Corp. has invested in Core Photonics, an Israeli dual-camera manufacturer, while Samsung Electronics has applied for patents on dual camera technologies in succession. The next Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone, which is scheduled to go on sale in the first half of this year, will allegedly not come with a dual lens camera setup. However, models after that are expected to be equipped with a dual camera.        

According to industry sources on January 12, Samsung Venture Investment, Foxconn, the biggest assembler of Apple, and Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek have invested a total of US$15 million (17.69 billion won) in Core Photonics.

Core Photonics is the leading vendor of smartphone dual camera imaging technologies and has collaborated with Qualcomm. To date, the company has raised about US$50 million (58.98 billion won) since its foundation in 2012. Core Photonics plans to use the latest investment as a stepping stone to develop dual cameras for next-generation smartphones and tap into the action camera market.

As a dual lens camera has been embedded in the Apple iPhone 7 Plus and the LG V20, it is becoming standard equipment of premium smartphones. A dual camera phone refers to a smartphone which has dual cameras on the rear. It is a type of camera with two or more lenses with a separate image sensor or film frame for each lens. It makes the picture more vivid and detailed and the color more accurate, compared to a single lens camera. It also allows the camera to simulate human binocular vision, and therefore gives it the ability to capture three-dimensional images. This is why a dual camera is considered essential equipment to introduce augmented reality (AR).

Samsung Electronics has recently submitted a patent for a dual-camera configuration, which employees a wide-angle and telephoto lens camera, to the U.S Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). For the technology, a wide-angle lens can scan a moving subject, while a telephoto lens tracks the moving subject in real-time, without the user making any manual adjustment to the camera’s focus. Using two lenses, the camera shows one subject with two images. A wide-angle lens is used first for a quickly moving subject, while a telephoto lens is used first for a slowly moving subject.

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics considered adopting a dual camera with a telephoto zooms lens, but it is said that the company has tentatively concluded not to use a dual camera by reason of rising cost.

 

 

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