We have been getting several rumors about the upcoming Apple devices. Indeed, the iPhone 13 and the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have been in the spotlight. Still, this time we get information about a new feature that could arrive in future Apple phones, as Cupertino has recently been granted a patent for a periscope camera system.

It seems that Apple may give its fans a new periscope camera system as soon as next year. The company has recently been granted a patent for a “Folded camera,” which was spotted at the United States Patent and Trademark Office by the guys at Patently Apple. Said camera system arrives as a possible solution to the lack of space inside a smartphone that can limit image quality.

“The advent of small, mobile multipurpose devices such as smartphones and tablet or pad devices has resulted in a need for high-resolution, small form factor cameras that are lightweight, compact, and capable of capturing high resolution, high quality images at low F-numbers for integration in the devices… Thus, a challenge from an optical system design point of view is to provide an imaging lens system that is capable of capturing high brightness, high resolution images under the physical constraints imposed by small form factor cameras.”
“The shapes, materials, and arrangements of the refractive lens elements in the lens stack may be selected to capture high resolution, high quality images while providing a sufficiently long back focal length to accommodate the second prism.”

This new system would take the light received by the sensor, and it would then redirect it to the lens system through its optical axis to provide increased optical zoom and an overall improvement in image quality while keeping the lens design small enough to be used in a smartphone. Now, we already have periscope tech in the current iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max models, so this new tech could arrive as soon as 2022, or at least that’s what Ming-Chi Kuo said initially. However, he now believes that we could have to wait until 2023 to see this new tech in an iPhone, even though other reports still think we could see this new periscope camera in 2022.

 

Source Patently Apple

Via MacRumors