Most smartphone brands nowadays invest much of their R&D into professional smartphone photography. TECNO isn’t an exception in this list.

Not only are they bringing the best smartphone hardware they could provide for their wallet-friendly handsets, they’re also getting serious in delivering new camera technologies to the masses.

These will open doors to a new world of imaging. It will also provide exceptional results that were not possible before due to hardware and/or software limitations.

Xiaohan Huang, TECNO’s Director for Image R&D Center, presented three main pain-points when it comes to shooting photos in a smartphone. Those could be addressed with TECNO’s latest innovations in mobile imaging.

Liquid Telephoto Macro Lens

The problem most brands encounter when producing smartphones is that telephoto zoom lens takes too much space. TECNO solves this with their headlining “liquid” telephoto macro lens.

This new type of telephoto shooter incorporates a liquid-filled lens into the actual telephoto module. It adapts a lens curvature depending on how close or far you are from a subject.

This unique liquid lens also ensures better macro shots. It can get to as close as 5cm that traditional periscope telephoto lens fail to provide. Those lenses rely on increasing the overall motor drive — which is also inefficient and expensive to make.

TECNO’s approach relies on adjusting and utilizing the voltage to adjust the lens curvature. This not only gives the best details in a shot possible, but also maintains the thinness and the compact form factor of the smartphone.

W-Shaped Adjustable Physical Aperture

Unlike usual flagship smartphone cameras with the traditional aperture opening, TECNO steps it up a notch with their very-own W-Shaped aperture. This was inspired from the eyes of a cuttlefish.

Much like a standard smartphone lens with dual variable aperture system, TECNO’s patented technology allows users to manually adjust the camera’s aperture. It also precisely manages light while eliminates that annoying glare. This is one of the biggest pain-points in smartphone cameras.

This new type of aperture also ensures better photographs even when challenged by scenarios with harsh backlight. No need to compromise between having poor/dark subjects or overexposed skies.

Universal Tone (UT) Technology

TECNO is among the few phone brands that connect its partners to its users. And ICYMI, TECNO is the leading phone brand in Africa as well as being a rising brand among Southeast Asian nations.

They say most AI algorithms that phone brands have do not deliver the true color of people in color.

But with TECNO’s plethora of R&D centers across the globe alongside leading global universities such as Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), they have more than enough sample sets to make Universal Tone (UT) technology a reality when taking picture-perfect and accurately-colored portraits.

With this, people of color will also feel they are respected and accepted. Something many smartphone manufacturers fail to deliver.

Sony x TECNO

While Computational Photography is becoming more prevalent, it would still not be possible to achieve a desirable image output without having a great image sensor. Phones still need hardware components in order to make smartphone photography even better. These are: image sensor, lens, back-end processor, camera module, and other necessary components.

Jun Zhang, the Director of Sony’s Semiconductor Mobile Engineering in China, told us that they constantly improve to make their sensors even better. And with TECNO stepping into the scene, they are teaming up with Sony in bringing the best camera tech possible. This results in a more seamless collaboration with one another.

And with the debut of Sony’s dual-layer stacked sensor “LYTIA”, Sony’s director also told us that they’re moving forward with that direction to ensure excellence in imaging quality without sacrificing the overall heft of a smartphone. Something we’ve encountered with 1-inch mobile sensors. No definite word though if TECNO plans on bringing us a smartphone with the latest LYTIA sensor just yet.

The Future of Lens

Nigel Atherton, the Editor in Chief of UK’s leading photography magazine Amateur Photographer is very thrilled with how the smartphone photography scene will look like in the next one to two years thanks to TECNO’s imaging innovation. As someone who has a culturally-diverse family, he told us that the UT technology would be further utilized when taking portraits and photos with family and friends.

For him, the two other camera technologies by TECNO together with Sony’s promised improvements in sensor also meant better dynamic range, reduced noise, and improved signal processing for faster imaging output.

We never witnessed how any of these new imaging technologies by TECNO work in real life. However, the ever-growing Chinese smartphone brand proudly says these three new technologies are compatible with one another and might be in a future (flagship) device soon (Clue: three letters?)

More so, TECNO has also kept video shooting in mind while they are working with these new camera innovations. As Universal Tone (UT) is software-based, it’s been continuously observed by TECNO. Meanwhile, the two other imaging innovations are hardware-based so TECNO said they could definitely be used for dynamic shooting as well.