Tired of huge camera bumps? Oppo teases new retractable camera

Just next week will be Oppo’s big Inno Day event, their annual convention where they show off their latest technologies and designs. Ahead of it though, we’ve already gotten a quick sneak preview of what we can expect, and it’s certainly exciting.

Oppo have shown off a brief video displaying a retractable camera for smartphones. The ‘self-developed retractable camera’ as Oppo calls it is seen extending out of the smartphone’s camera bump once the camera app is hit, and then retracting back into itself. It also appears as though it’s going to be water resistant and able to take a fall or two based on their teaser. Check it out in their video below:

It’s certainly not the first time Oppo has shown off a huge redesign of the smartphone camera. Back in 2018, they revealed the Oppo Find X, complete with a full screen display thanks to the sliding camera mechanism. It hides both the 16MP and 20MP dual camera setup on the rear and the 25MP front camera inside a moving top popup. The Oppo Find X was perhaps too ahead of its time, but it certainly turned heads in the room. It’s also not the first time we’ve seen a retractable camera either, as Samsung did it with the ridiculous-looking Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom that paired a Galaxy S4 Mini with a digital camera and offered 10x optical zoom.

As for the Oppo retractable camera, we’re not too sure what’s the big benefit here other than a smaller camera bump. It could be a zoom lens, though there’s no indication of it judging from the teaser. Instead, the teaser simply shows it as a 1/1.56-inch sensor with a 50mm, f/2.4 lens. It’s still a fairly large sensor for a smartphone though, and the longer lens could mean that the retractable camera will be a telephoto shooter for upcoming Oppo devices.

The Oppo Inno Day convention will be happening on the 14th of December till the 15th, and we’ll surely be seeing more of the retractable camera there. Historically, Oppo has shown off a fair bit of cool devices at their Inno Day events; last year we saw the reveal of the Oppo X, a smartphone with a rolling OLED display, allowing it to stretch itself from a 6.7-inch display into a tablet with a 7.4-inch screen. If you want to know more about the Oppo Inno Day, you can check out its event page on their website.