Huawei recently unveiled the flagship Mate 40 series, which is currently one of the most powerful lineups of Android phones at the moment. Its donut-shaped camera setup features a new free form lens and the company has just released a blog post explaining the advantages of this new lens.
Instead of traditional spherical or aspherical optical elements, the Mate 40’s 20MP ultrawide camera has an asymmetrical lens with a complex and uneven surface. The idea behind this unique camera lens structure was to reduce distortion. This new lens also allows for more light to pass through the sensor, which improves the overall camera performance and quality.
It not only features a unique structure, but it is also lighter and thinner than usual camera lenses. Once the technology becomes more refined, we can expect to see smaller camera bumps, unlike the ones seen on the Galaxy Note 20, iPhone 12, etc. This is because a free form lens requires fewer optical elements to function.
Huawei says that they have been working on the free form lens for two years and it is finally ready to hit the shelves. They are also planning to implement the technology on telephoto lenses since they also tend to have distortion. This could also further decrease the sizes of smartphone camera bumps in the future.
