The “liquid lens company” Varioptic has recently announced that it has developed the first liquid lens, A316S, offering “Optical Image Stabilization” functionality to mobile phones.
Using Varioptic’s new liquid lens mobile phones will be able to compensate the so called “handshake blur” defect, restoring an image quality comparable to a compact digital still camera (DSC). The lens is robust, has no moving parts, and it uses very limited power (less than 50mW during a shot). The A316S liquid lens actuator, featuring both OIS and silent/smooth AF, is able to fit in typical AF camera module size.
And for the record, liquid lenses have been in production since January 2007 in consumer, medical and industrial devices ranging from full HD DV camcorders, bar code readers, security cameras, dental cameras to machine vision cameras. We’ll see which handset maker will be the first to use this lens in its products. Nokia NSeries were always known for their superb cameras, but there’s also Sony Ericsson’s Cybershot series…