Samsung files patent for smartphone camera with telephoto and wide angle dual lenses

Samsung has filed for patent of an innovative dual lens smartphone camera, which will use both a telephoto lens and a wide angle lens, according to a report in Sammobile. The patent uses a wide angle lens to track the movement of an object, that gets photographed with the telephoto lens. The dual set up allows for tracking of direction and speed of subjects as well as derive depth information about the scene.

Say a cyclist or snowboarder is coming towards the camera, then the camera can automatically switch from a telephoto lens to a wide angle lens. If on the other hand, the subject moves away from the camera, the processor changes the lens being used for the image from a wide angle lens to a telephoto lens. For subjects moving across the screen, the wide angle lens tracks the subject and the telephoto lens captures the image.

While one of the lenses acquires the image information, another lens tracks the subject being photographed. The switching between lenses occours automatically based on the tracking information, which also derives the speed of the subject. The dual lens setup allows both the foreground and the background to be in focus at the same time. While the patent shows a smartphone in the diagrams, the implementation has been patented for tablets and digital cameras as well.

The dual camera set up could potentially be used on the Samsung Galaxy S8 , or the next device in the Note lineup.