Ahead of MWC 2019, Oppo held an event to unveil its 10x optical zoom solution for mobile phones. The company also announced that it would be launching a smartphone with 10x optical zoom in Q2 2019.

While Oppo had demoed a 5x optical zoom solution at MWC in 2017, it never got around to releasing a smartphone with the tech. Since then, the company has worked on the technology to improve it further and slim it down.

The demo phone from Oppo features a triple camera set up at the back. This includes a 48MP primary camera shooter, a 12MP telephoto sensor, and an 8MP ultra-wide angle shooter. The primary 48MP sensor and the telephoto sensor both feature OIS. On the demo phone, Oppo offers zoom levels of 1x to 20x, with up to 10x being lossless optical zoom.

Oppo has managed to offer 10x optical zoom by using a periscope setup. This periscope setup allows for a focal length of between 35mm to 160mm. The inclusion of OIS on the primary sensor helps compensate for some hand movements that is evident at such a high level of zoom. However, that does not fully fix the wobbling effect.

While smartphones with 2x optical zoom have become common, Oppo is pushing things to an entirely different level here. Huawei does offer 5x zoom on the Mate 20 Pro using its massive 40MP sensor but Oppo is besting even that. It is obvious that photos from the 10x optical sensor will not be as good as DSLRs but for a smartphone camera, this would still be a major breakthrough.