Sony says dual-lens camera tech launching with 'major smartphone players' in next year

Apple's image sensor supplier, Sony, is expecting its dual-lens camera technology to be launched by "major smartphone players" within the next year, according to comments by the company's CFO.

"Well, for next year, our so-called dual-lens — dual-camera platform will be launched by, we believe, from major smartphone players," said Kenichiro Yoshida during Sony's most recent results call, as reported by Xperia Blog.

Yoshida warned however that the high-end smartphone market is "slowing down," which could impact demand and production by smartphone makers.

"So, we believe the real start, the takeoff of smartphone with dual-lens camera will be in the year of 2017," he noted.

Apple is believed to be working on a dual-lens camera based on Sony technology, which could appear in an "iPhone 7 Plus", or at least some versions of it. The second lens might be used for optical zoom functions, overcoming one of the main limitations of most smartphone cameras.

Yoshida's comments suggest that Apple could potentially hold a dual-lens system back for an "iPhone 7s," although market constraints are less likely to affect the company given the popularity and profitability of its devices.

17 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 8 years ago

A two lens system makes no sense to me. If there were a depth-sensing LIDAR-like sensor instead of a second lens, I could see some use for that.

msantti 1362 comments · 22 Years

I doubt it's dual cameras just for the sake of it.

i want this stuff on the 7, not the 7s.

kkerst 330 comments · 19 Years

Think Lytro, but with two lenses. I've been waiting for far field cameras on the iPhone since it came out.

Mr_Grey 118 comments · 8 Years

SpamSandwich said:

A two lens system makes no sense to me. If there were a depth-sensing LIDAR-like sensor instead of a second lens, I could see some use for that.

Well, once you have two (or more) cameras tied together in this fashion you can do lots of different processing on the images and one of those choices is actually depth-sensing. LIDAR seems unlikely in the extreme given that it would require lasers embedded into the phone which is neither thick enough to accommodate them, nor powerful enough to drive the lasers.

Mr_Grey said:

SpamSandwich said:

A two lens system makes no sense to me. If there were a depth-sensing LIDAR-like sensor instead of a second lens, I could see some use for that.

Well, once you have two (or more) cameras tied together in this fashion you can do lots of different processing on the images and one of those choices is actually depth-sensing. LIDAR seems unlikely in the extreme given that it would require lasers embedded into the phone which is neither thick enough to accommodate them, nor powerful enough to drive the lasers.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/5/8347735/this-new-camera-sensor-could-turn-your-phone-into-a-3d-scanner