The 2024 Mobile Phone Market: Periscope Lens Upgrades and the Glorious Return of External Lenses

The 2024 Mobile Phone Market: Periscope Lens Upgrades and the Glorious Return of External LensesThe mobile phone market has become increasingly competitive in recent years, with brands investing heavily in imaging systems to outperform their rivals in photography capabilities. In 2024, the importance of long-range zoom capabilities is becoming increasingly prominent, a key focus for flagship phones

The 2024 Mobile Phone Market: Periscope Lens Upgrades and the Glorious Return of External Lenses

The mobile phone market has become increasingly competitive in recent years, with brands investing heavily in imaging systems to outperform their rivals in photography capabilities. In 2024, the importance of long-range zoom capabilities is becoming increasingly prominent, a key focus for flagship phones. Take the first-half flagship models from Xiaomi, OPPO, and Samsung as examples: dual telephoto lens setups have become standard, with Samsung even abandoning its 10x telephoto lens in favor of a large-sensor 5x periscope lens. However, due to limitations in optics and materials science, achieving the optical quality of professional camera telephoto lenses in such small devices remains challenging. Therefore, many brands are using AI technology to compensate for the lack of detail in telephoto shots, optimizing results through AI photography algorithms. Yet, besides AI-enhanced telephoto, users have another option: external lenses.

Recently, Honor's select platform listed a photography kit from Fotorgear, whose main selling point is its support for various external lenses. This concept, which faded from the mobile accessories market around 2016, is making a strong comeback, attracting considerable industry attention.

External Lenses: From Popularity to Obscurity

In 2011, Olloclip launched its first external lens for the iPhone, marking the official beginning of the smartphone external lens era. While Olloclip claims to be the "first," the long time elapsed and relatively low technical barrier make this difficult to definitively confirm. However, Olloclip undeniably played a crucial role in the development of mobile phone external lenses. During the iPhone 4 era, Olloclip lenses became a must-have accessory. Following its success, brands like Apexel and Moment also released their own products.

Contrary to popular belief, only a small percentage of external lenses at that time offered telephoto capabilities; most were wide-angle, fisheye, or macro lenses, primarily aimed at "expanding the phone's field of view" or enabling fun photography. This "nearsighted" approach is understandable: smartphone camera quality was generally low then, used more for "recording life" than "artistic creation." Lacking a professional market, external lens brands struggled to justify the high cost of developing telephoto lenses through premium pricing. Wide-angle, fisheye, and macro lenses were cheaper to develop and manufacture, making their price point of around $100 more accessible to consumers. Furthermore, the optical design of telephoto lenses reduces light transmission at the end, which was a significant drawback for smartphones with already weak light sensitivity.

In 2016, Samsung released the Galaxy S6, whose large F1.9 aperture (most phones at the time were F2.2) and OIS optical image stabilization improved low-light photography capabilities. For external lens brands, the Galaxy S6 meant external lenses could finally shed their "toy" label and unleash their true potential.

However, this didn't last. Within half a year of external lenses entering the mainstream, Apple released the iPhone 7 Plus, which pioneered multi-camera phone development, ushering in the era of "wide-angle + telephoto" dual-camera systems. Smartphone manufacturers' exploration of multi-camera modules presented a significant challenge to the external lens industry. Multi-camera systems fundamentally addressed the shooting scenarios offered by external lenses, allowing users to switch between telephoto and wide-angle with a simple tap. This convenience was unmatched by external lenses. Simultaneously, smartphone image quality improved significantly, rendering previously "acceptable" external lenses a drag on overall image quality. With external lenses failing across product capability, market influence, and scale, their decline was inevitable.

In 2019, Huawei launched the P30 series, introducing periscope telephoto lenses to the mobile phone industry. While this opened up endless possibilities for phone telephoto capabilities, it effectively eliminated the external lens's survival space.

The Resurgence of External Cameras Fueled by Creative Photography

In 2023, the over-sharpening and artificial detail enhancement in AI-powered smartphone photography caused some user dissatisfaction. External lenses, with their genuinely accurate images, re-entered the public eye. Compared to their predecessors, external lenses after several market shake-ups have seen substantial improvements in optical quality. Coupled with the optical image stabilization now standard in flagship phones, external lenses, particularly telephoto lenses, experienced a second life.

First, compared to the compact periscope telephoto lenses within phones, high-end external telephoto lenses offer insurmountable advantages in image quality. Although AI-enhanced ISPs can algorithmically "fill in" missing details, these capabilities are limited when compared to external lenses that are tens of times larger.

Second, the demand for creative photography provides fertile ground for external lenses. For practical reasons, most smartphone multi-camera modules only include ultra-wide, wide, and telephoto lenses. External lenses offer wider creative choices, such as fisheye and anamorphic lenses. More importantly, these creative lenses can be paired with the phone's large-sensor main camera. Given the current trend of shrinking ultra-wide lenses in 2024, external lenses that leverage the main camera have gained a loyal following.

The FotorGear external lens kit on Honor's platform, for example, offers numerous lenses designed for the main camera, such as a telephoto lens transforming the main camera into a 400mm super-telephoto, an anamorphic lens providing a 1.55x wider field of view, and lenses with focal lengths of 45mm and 75mm. This rich selection provides lossless zoom capabilities for the main camera, covering all shooting scenarios and allowing external lenses to return to the mainstream as high-end creative tools.

The Modular Camera Concept: A Resurgence?

It's worth noting that today's external lenses are increasingly versatile and larger, some even incorporating fill lights. By current standards, can external lenses be considered a form of "modular smartphone"? Furthermore, if external lenses could significantly expand the main camera's capabilities, why not design smartphone cameras as freely interchangeable and customizable modules?

Throughout the long history of smartphones, there have been attempts at modular camera designs: LG G5 included an official vertical shooting handle, Sony released the QX lens-style cameras that required a smartphone, and Motorola took modularity to the extreme with its camera back modules.

However, due to factors like price and compatibility, none of these modular designs achieved widespread market acceptance. Moreover, the camera, a core feature of smartphones, isn't suited to modular design: smartphones are complete, all-scenario hardware sets, and modularity inherently compromises their integrity. For example, even if a brand created modular external lenses, the most practical wide-angle module would likely remain permanently attached, with others only swapped in for specific shots. This wouldn't improve user experience, instead adding extra cost per module. The challenges of building a modular camera ecosystem prevent widespread adoption.

Mobile phone imaging has entered the era of computational photography. A high-quality photo relies on the collaborative efforts of camera module brands, sensor suppliers, phone manufacturers, and third-party camera developers. To protect their own ecosystems, smartphone brands are unlikely to open their camera tone protocols to third-party brands and developers.

Instead, regulating the external lens market and improving the compatibility of external lenses with different phone models for example, by creating co-branded lens-mounting protective cases with phone manufacturers is what external lens brands should focus on.

From the perspective of mobile imaging development, the return of external lenses doesn't signify industry regression but represents a new way to enhance the smartphone camera experience after reaching a certain level of capability. Compared to the significant changes required for modular cameras, external lenses offer a lower-barrier entry for more creative smartphone photography. Until the next major advancement in mobile imaging, such as AI truly replacing optical photography, the external lens market will continue to exist.

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