Oppo Smartphone Event This Week Tipped For 10x Optical Zoom Camera Reveal

An Oppo invite is making the rounds that wants people to tune in on January 16. We won't know precisely what the event is about until tomorrow, but rumors point to technology that is an evolution of tech that Oppo showed off back in 2017 at MWC. That tech was for a slick 5x optical zoom system that uses a prism.

That fancy prism was able to bend the light 90-degrees allowing the lens for the zoom function to be horizontal across the device to overcome the packing constraints of thin smartphone designs. As cool as that zoom tech was, Oppo never put it into a commercially available smartphone. That may be changing with rumors pointing to a refined version of that tech making its debut at tomorrow's event.

The Chinese writing on the invite pictured above reportedly translates roughly to "ten times the view, see you soon." That seemingly indicates that Oppo has taken that 5x optical zoom tech from a few years back and turned it into 10x optical zoom tech. Cameras are one of the common things that differentiates smartphones and lures in buyers in a crowded market. If Oppo can field a phone with 10x optical zoom and the ability to take high-quality images at all zoom levels, smartphone buyers will certainly pay attention.

Previous rumors have claimed that Oppo was ready to unveil 10x hybrid optical zoom tech at CES or MWC. Oppo has been working hard to set itself apart in the smartphone market. Last year, it released the Find X which packs in 10GB of RAM and no notch.