A new patent suggests that the Samsung Note 9 and Galaxy S9 could feature new camera technology. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has filed a patent application in South Korea for a new smartphone camera module. If the new Samsung camera tech makes it into the Galaxy Note 9 or Galaxy S9, then it could mean a huge stride for smartphone cameras toward the level of quality offered by digital SLR cameras.
New Samsung camera tech for the Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy S9?
Let’s Go Digital spotted a series of new sketches that have been added to the patent to explain the new lens system. The new Samsung camera tech is made up of a lens system that contains several lens elements lined up along the optical axis. The camera system features a lens cylinder between the lens elements and spacers that allow light to come into the various lens elements.
Samsung filed the patent with the Korean Intellectual Property Rights Information Service.
Samsung camera tech aimed at reducing lens flare
While cameras with more than one lens element do tend to offer better quality images, lens flare becomes a bigger and bigger problem as more elements are added. Lens flare happens whenever each of the lens elements reflect direct light at each other, and the result is a sort of glow or circles in the photos. The patent application for the camera tech describes a solution to this lens flare issue, which is adding a broadband anti-reflection coating to at least one of the lens elements.
Let’s Go Digital explains that there are two different types of these coatings, with broadband being one and a single layer being the other. The broadband coatings are more advanced, and the one that’s used in the patent for the new Samsung camera tech features a surface reflection of -.2% to 1%. This coating reduces lens flare and the ghosting that results from it. Such coatings are already commonly used by digital camera makers, so basically, Samsung is taking a page from the playbook of DSLR camera makers.
Of course we can’t know for certain yet whether the new Samsung camera tech will make it into the Galaxy Note 9 or Galaxy S9. It seems like it would be too late for it to be in the Galaxy S9, which is expected to be released early next year, but perhaps the Galaxy Note 9 will get the technology.
