Varioptic Lens in Samsung Phone Soon

Mobileburn: Samsung has signed on to make use of the Varioptic lenses, and we might see a commercial release of a Varioptic equipped phone from Samsung as soon as Q3 of this year. Varioptic says that when purchased in volume, modules making use of their lens should cost about one third as much as traditional servo or coil based systems.

Optically, the Varioptic lens has a 20 diopter range of focus. The lens will work for normal cameraphone usage and for special situations that require very close focusing. The lens is capable of focusing as closely as 5cm.

One discussed point was the ability of Varioptic lens to withstand high G-force and low temperature situations. Varioptic claims that neither proved to be a problem for the lens. In particular, the lens does indeed slow down in cold temperatures, but that it still worked fast enough to keep ahead of the LCD displays used in mobile devices, which slow down greatly in cold.