The rumor: Apple is working on the biggest upgrade yet for their telephoto zoom lens, according to Jeff Pu (53.3% accurate, via MacRumors).
- At least one new iPhone releasing in 2023 is said to include this new 10x zoom lens that will allow users to optically zoom without losing quality
- We first heard about a periscope lens coming to iPhone from Ming-Chi Kuo (75.9% accurate)
Our take: What is a periscope zoom lens? Essentially, it takes a longer zoom lens that normally would make the phone unreasonably thick and places it sidways, using a mirror or prism to reflect what it sees into the camera sensor. There’s an image that illustrates it above and a really helpful video from Samsung below. I never saw it visualized like this before and it actually makes sense: this is the path to seriously increasing the optical zoom in smartphones.