Oppo officially announces its 5x optical zoom technology

Just as we suspected, Oppo’s mysterious camera technology turned out to be an optical zooming one. Dubbed 5x, the company’s new tech manages to cram a telephoto lens inside a mobile phone, allowing for 5x "lossless" zooming.

Smartphones have had other optical zooming options in the past, the most popular solution being the one employed by the iPhone 7 Plus: having two sensors, one of which is permanently zoomed in, and using software to seamlessly combine the two. Oppo’s 5x, however, does things a bit differently, since the second sensor is hidden inside the phone’s ...