At the 2016 Mobile World Congress, Oppo unveiled the Super VOOC prototype, a technology that will be able to fully charge a smartphone in only 15 minutes.
The technology, which is still in the experimental stage, will give Oppo a huge edge in the cutthroat smartphone industry. However, it seems that the company is not yet done in its announcements of new smartphone technology.
Oppo has also announced the SmartSensor, a new technology for optical image stabilization that the company claims is a massive breakthrough for smartphones.
The current optical image stabilization technology for smartphones is lens-based, which uses a motor to move the lens of the smartphone camera on two axes to compensate for movements while taking pictures. Smartphones have not yet been able to use the second kind of image stabilization, specifically the sensor-based one, due to the small size of the camera modules of the devices.
The SmartSensor is the first-ever sensor-based image stabilization technology for smartphones, and is able to achieve image stabilization compensation not by moving the smartphone camera's lens but rather the sensor itself over three axes within milliseconds.
With three axes for stabilization adjustments, the SmartSensor can compensate for more kinds of movement. In addition, it is able to achieve comprehensive stabilization in just 15 milliseconds, despite the additional axis, compared to the 50 milliseconds that lens-based technology requires.
While lens-based technologies only have precision levels of 3 micrometers to 5 micrometers, the SmartSensor offers precision levels of 0.3 micrometers, which makes it at least ten times more precise than the current systems being used.
The SmartSensor was also created through the latest developments in micro-electro-mechanical technology, allowing it to have a thickness equivalent to only two sheets of paper.
As such, the SmartSensor is currently the most precise, fastest and smallest optical image stabilization technology for smartphones.
In addition, the technology requires much less power and does not expose the smartphone camera's lens to heating risks, which will be beneficial for long-running photography sessions.
Oppo has not yet released the date of availability for the technology, but it should be coming to smartphones soon as it seems to be a finished product, or at least close to it. Smartphone photographers would love to have this feature in their devices as soon as they can, though it remains to be seen whether Oppo will keep the technology for itself or license it out to other smartphone makers.
