Samsung has been making camera sensors for smartphones with the latest technologies and the highest resolution in the market for quite a while. Now, the brand is venturing into camera systems with continuous or variable optical zoom, and surprisingly, the company is not making the system for itself but for one of its rivals.
According to a new report from The Elec, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is developing a camera system with continuous optical zoom for smartphones at the request of Xiaomi and other brands. If successful, the publication claims that the South Korean tech giant will supply the camera system to Xiaomi.
Samsung was one of the first brands to launch smartphones with cameras that offer optical zoom. Since then, the brand kept upping the game, and offered phones with the highest optical zoom in the market, such as the Galaxy S23 Ultra with 10x optical zoom. However, the brand took a step back in the department for its latest non-foldable flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and equipped it with a camera with 5x optical zoom.
The only true rival to Samsung in the Android mobile market when it comes to telephoto or periscope cameras is Sony. It has been offering phones with cameras featuring continues or variable zoom, which gives people a greater flexibility when capturing telephoto images and allows them to take photos with high sharpness at various zoom levels. This is something that Samsung’s or other brands’ smartphones can’t do at the moment.
With Chinese brands being the fastest to adopt new technologies are eager to offer phones with cameras featuring continuous optical zoom. With very few companies making high-end camera sensors and Samsung being at the forefront of them, the Chinese brands seem to have approached the South Korean tech giant for continuous zoom cameras. Hopefully, Samsung will offer this system in its upcoming flagship phones as well.