While foldable iPhones are still a twinkle in the Cupertino design team’s eye, folded optics may appear as soon as the iPhone 14, and its Pro Max variety in particular. What is folded optics, you ask? It’s the good ol’ periscope zoom that companies like Samsung, Oppo, and Huawei, have been equipping their flagship handsets with this year.
In any case, the tricky patent conundrum is apparently going to be resolved by Samsung shipping its folded optics actuators or lenses to LG, which will then еmploy them into an oven-ready zoom module, and then ship them to Foxconn to put in upcoming iPhones. We even probed Corephotonics about their zoom tech for phones achieved with two lenses, one wide, one narrow, set at different levels, and came away impressed, as you can see in the video below. This was back in 2014.
Could iPhone 14 Pro Max have 10x periscope zoom camera?
Apple usually catches up with the competition in major technology breakthroughs about two or even three generation later, when the initial kinks have been ironed out by someone else, and, most importantly, when the components of the novel technology have fallen in price enough so that it can maintain its profit margins.
The issue, however, is that Samsung and Corephotonics hold the good patents here, for the so-called Ball Guide Actuator that provides way more precise control of the folded optics movement than Apple’s spring mechanism patents, and is on top of that gentler on the battery, plus it takes less space inside an already crammed camera island. Long story short, it seems that Apple would have to hold high-level meetings with Samsung if it wants to employ quality periscope zoom on its future iPhones.
