EXPLAINER: Why does your phone have multiple cameras and what does each do?

MANILA, Philippines — In the not-so-distant past, mobile phones were nothing more than sleek communication devices, with cameras appearing as humble add-ons on the back. Fast forward to the early days of smartphones, a single tiny camera lens and a modest flash were the standard. 

However, today's smartphones have transformed, boasting multiple lenses that serve diverse photographic functions. Why did it evolve this way and what does each camera do? 

To better appreciate this, let’s take a closer look at the ultra-clear portrait camera system of the OPPO Reno10 Series 5G with triple camera setup: an Ultra-Clear Main Camera, a Telephoto Camera and an Ultra Wide-angle Camera. 

The main camera is the workhorse of the smartphone camera system. It is designed to provide a balanced and versatile shooting experience for everyday users. 

It offers a standard field of view, making it suitable for a wide range of subjects and settings in the most common usage scenarios.

Ideally, the main camera closely replicates what the human eye sees. OPPO Reno10 Pro+ 5G does this with its 50-megapixel primary shooter using the Sony IMX890 large-format sensor,  ensuring that users can capture people, objects, or scenes with intricate details, textures, colors and contrast in a variety of conditions.

The Reno10 Series 5G lineup features the first-ever telephoto portrait camera in the Reno series, but what’s the fuzz about this camera? Well, according to OPPO, the Reno10 Pro+ 5G’s Pro-Level Telephoto Portrait Camera is the highest-spec periscope telephoto camera available on any smartphone, ever! 

What’s good about this? Let’s dissect the term. 

First, telephoto. A telephoto camera is a camera that excels in optical zooming into far-away objects, allowing you to capture distant subjects with greater clarity and detail, as compared to digital zoom which uses software to crop and enlarge the image.

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In the Reno10 Series 5G, the Reno10 5G and Reno10 Pro 5G have 32MP telephoto while the Reno10 Pro+ 5G has 64MP telephoto portrait camera, which has a periscope design that enables a 3x optical telephoto configuration. This periscope design also can visually