Samsung’s new acquisition can do wonders for optical zoom on its phones

Samsung has reportedly signed a deal to acquire Israeli company Corephotonics, which specializes in dual camera technologies for mobile devices. The deal is worth $155 million, according to Israeli publication Globes. The company is based in Ramat Hahayal city of Israel, and employs a staff of dozens.

Corephotonics have previously worked with Chinese phone manufacturer Oppo on a periscope camera solution that enabled 5x optical zoom.

Samsung acquires zooming technology firm

Telephoto lens zoom has been a big innovation in smartphone camera tech over the last few years. However, smartphone manufacturers always have the challenge of making the devices thinner. Samsung is gradually bringing optical zoom functionality to its smartphones in order to make them more competitive. To keep up with this need, Samsung has acquired a company with some interesting zoom-related tech. To be clear, Corephotonics does not manufacture cameras itself, it only designs them.

Founded in 2012 by David Mendlovic, a professor of electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University, Corephotonics develops dual camera technologies designed to improve the performance of smartphone cameras. The company has years of zoom-related expertise, and roughly 150 filed patents in its arsenal. Its periscope solution for 5x zoom is mooted for triple camera setups, according to its 2018 triple camera white paper. “Combined with multi-frame technologies, image fusion and multi-scaling, this camera (setup) could provide up to a total of 25x zoom factor,” read an excerpt of the paper.

To date, Corephotonics has raised a total of $50 million. Samsung had been one of the leading investors in the company, having participated in two out of three of the company’s funding rounds. And now by purchasing the company, Samsung could soon start churning out handsets with advanced imaging capabilities. Corephotonics has not yet confirmed or denied this report.

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