Having a world-famous camera company supply a phone manufacturer with parts for the photography system on the firm’s handsets is not new. Huawei uses lenses supplied by Leica, and in the latest partnership, OnePlus uses camera parts from Hasselblad. The public might not know that name, but among professionals it is well known and the company has a great reputation.
Tipster Ice Universe posted an interesting rumor on Weibo the other day that was seconded on Twitter by another (albeit lesser-known) tipster using the handle @heyitsyogesh. Both say that Samsung is in talks with Olympus about supplying Samsung with cameras for future smartphone models. The cameras provided under the rumored partnership will be high quality with Samsung continuing to use its own image signal processors (ISP).
A tweet sent by @heyitdyogesh mentions that an Olympus camera might end up on a special edition model of the Galaxy Fold. Turning to regular production models, we could see Olympus take over Samsung’s camera module for the first time with next year’s Galaxy S22 flagship series. If tradition holds, we could see that line launch sometime during the first quarter of 2022.
Samsung is believed to be working on the successor to its current top-of-the-line Exynos chipset which it has codenamed Olympus. Reportedly, the chip will deliver improved performance compared to the Exynos 2100. Do you believe that the use of the Olympus codename is a clue Sammy is giving us or is it just a coincidence?
Despite the rumors, we would be amiss if we didn’t point out that Olympus sold its camera and imaging business to Japan Industrial Partners last year. That would seem to put the kibosh on the rumors, and so far no partnership has been announced anyway. If it turns out just to be a failed rumor, it isn’t clear anyway whether the use of a high-profile camera brand actually helps to generate smartphone sales.