The global smartphone market appears to be the battleground for a new war, with manufacturers competing on the number of camera sensors they can put on a smartphone. Samsung recently took it to the next level with four camera sensors at the back of the Galaxy A9 (2018). However, LG is planning to take its smartphone camera up a notch as the Korean company filed a patent with USPTO for a smartphone with 16 camera lenses. The patent was granted on 20 November 2018 reported by LetsGoDigital.
It’s all pretty bonkers, but the company has already implemented a couple of these ideas. Multiple lenses on cameras isn’t exactly new, over the last year, we’ve seen phones with two and three rear lenses break into the mass marketplace, along with rumors of a larger five-lens device from Nokia, and even a potential nine-camera smartphone prototype from the multi-lens startup Light. But LG’s patent would look to go far beyond even that, with a full 16-camera array. The lenses are placed in a specific curvature within a matrix arrangement on the rear side.
According to the patent, the camera array can be used to 3D scan objects, to simply take 16 images from a variety of angles, or to generate “moving images” by combining data from the various cameras. The patent also suggests you can replace sections of a photo with sections taken from a different angle.
The LG’s patent also describes combining the different camera angles to create a miniature film, sort of like a superpowered version of things. Likewise the patent claims that it’d be able to use the different datasets from the different lenses to cut out things from the image.
However, one problem LG might encounter were it to try and implement these sensors on a smartphone would be space. The sensors would need to be much smaller than today’s mobile camera sensors in order to fit into a smartphone form factor, and smartphones already have a lot of components crammed into their bodies. Smaller sensors could lead to difficulties in low light shooting too as they aren’t able to gather as much light as larger ones. LG might be able to make use of image fusion and other processing technologies to overcome this hurdle, though.
However, for now, it’s unlikely that this type of smartphone will be commercialized in the coming year even if the patent exists, but nevertheless, LG is certainly considering it and OEMs tend to think ahead, trying to determine how our current technologies might evolve and where they could eventually lead to. Augmented reality is apparently here for the long run, and multiple cameras will inevitably facilitate it in one form or another.
