Apple will be adding two new lens suppliers — South Korea’s Semco and China’s Sunny Optical — to the iPhone supply chain this year, according to TFI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The most accurate Apple analyst, Kuo says the new suppliers will be able to deliver better components that can deliver high-quality performance. This means that, in 2022, Apple will introduce an iPhone — purportedly called iPhone 13, though the name may change — with a periscope telephoto lens, manufactured by Semco. Periscope lenses are compact and are small enough to fit into a normal lens and offer high zoom capabilities such as 30x, 50x, 100x. However, the exact details about Apple’s periscope lens aren’t known at the moment. Apple currently sources its lenses from Genius Electronic Optical, a Taiwanese supplier.
For this year’s iPhone 12, Apple will reportedly use Semco’s ball-based voice coil motor, instead of the spring-based design that is being used currently. This is touted to bring improved autofocus. iPhone 12 is said to include four models, a 5.4-inch, two 6.1-inch variant, and a larger 6.7-inch variant. The Pro models are tipped to feature triple-lens camera array and a LIDAR sensor that was seen on the latest iPad Pro. The iPhone 12 lineup will ship with A14 SoC and boot the latest iOS 14 out of the box. They are said to come with iPad Pro like flat stainless steel edges and rounded corners.
The telephoto lens on the iPhone 12 models will be bumped up to 3x optical zoom and to reportedly improve low-light photography through electronic image stabilisation. The Face ID sensor will get support for a wider angle of view. All iPhone 12 models are expected to come with 5G support and the iPhones are said to pack 2227mAh, 2775mAh, and 3687mAh battery capacities, probably with 20W fast-charging support.
