Recently, a new Apple patent was exposed. The patent demonstrates a technology called "Folded Camera", which the patent describes as: being able to integrate a camera module composed of multiple lenses into a mobile device, thereby bringing better camera effects; and the lens The shape, material, and arrangement of the refractive lens elements in the group can be selected while providing a back focal length long enough to accommodate the second prism to produce high-resolution, high-quality images.
Even though the patent description is so complicated and the patent diagram is so "high-end", in fact this technology has been used by all major manufacturers of Android phones, and maybe it is on the phone you are using now. Yes, this is the periscope camera commonly found on Android flagship phones.
Huawei P40 Pro series, Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, Xiaomi Mi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition... there are a lot of Android phones using periscope cameras, so why has Apple been so slow to use them?
Lu Weibing, general manager of the Redmi brand, once said that periscope cameras have two biggest "disadvantages": they are expensive and they are large. The former will increase the cost of mobile phones, while the latter will make mobile phones, which already have a small amount of space, face greater internal challenges. The author speculates that the cost of the iPhone is not cheap, and Apple is paranoid and strict about appearance design. This is the reason why the iPhone has not used a periscope camera.
But there is no need to despair. There is also a piece of blockbuster news that was exposed along with the patent diagram: the patent is expected to be used in iPhone models launched in 2022. Depending on the time of launch, it is most likely to be used in the iPhone 14. Thanks to this patent, it will bring 10-100 times zoom capability to the iPhone.
In other words, next year’s iPhone 14 will be the first iPhone equipped with a periscope camera and will support up to 100x zoom.