Warning, you won't be able to stop watching this ingenious bit of engineering on Samsung's latest 48MP camera phone
(Image credit: Techradar)
The Samsung Galaxy A10 has impressive party piece. It not only has three cameras rear cameras - but all three of these lenses pop-up and rotate in to serve as the front-facing selfie cameras too! It is a feat of engineering that will have you mesmerising – and we have been watching this video again and again of it in operation, shot by our colleagues at Techradar.
For this trick of engineering alone it is a worth contender it could well go down as one of our best camera phones. But this handset, which goes on sale at the end of May, also has some impressive photographic credentials.
The main camera is a 48 megapixel sensor with an f/2 lens - matching the resolution of other recent models such as the Honor View 20 and the Xiaomi Mi 9.
In addition there is an ultra-wide-lensed camera which offers a 123° view – which is roughly equivalent to the sort of view that you would get from a 12mm full-frame lens. This has a maximum aperture of f/2.2 and offers a resolution of 8 megapixels.
Finally there is a time-of-flight camera which is used to help create blurred background for photographs using AI.
The ingenious pop-up and rotating triple lens array is a great solution to the conundrum that smartphone manufacturers have faced... A front camera gets in the way of maximizing the size of the LCD screen. We have seen notch arrangements, and other clever solutions, to this – but this is the cleverest. It ensures that the 1080x2400 Super AMOLED panel fills the whole front of the phone. And you get a the advantage of all three cameras whichever way round the phone is pointing.
The pricing for the Samsung Galaxy A80 has yet to be announced - and it will be interesting to see how the motorised lens system works in practice when you get a chance to test this enticing new camera phone.
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Chris George has worked on Digital Camera World since its launch in 2017. He has been writing about photography, mobile phones, video making and technology for over 30 years – and has edited numerous magazines including PhotoPlus, N-Photo, Digital Camera, Video Camera, and Professional Photography.
His first serious camera was the iconic Olympus OM10, with which he won the title of Young Photographer of the Year - long before the advent of autofocus and memory cards. Today he uses a Nikon D800, a Fujifilm X-T1, a Sony A7, and his iPhone 15 Pro Max.
He has written about technology for countless publications and websites including The Sunday Times Magazine, The Daily Telegraph, Dorling Kindersley, What Cellphone, T3 and Techradar.
