OPPO Announces Retractable Lens, to Launch First Self-developed Chip on INNO Day
OPPO announced on Wednesday that its first self-developed chip will be revealed during the company’s INNO Day. The chip will be an independent NPU (Neural Processor) based on TSMC’s 6nm manufacturing process, 36Kr reported on Wednesday.
“The chip was in trial production in June, but has not yet been announced,” one OPPO insider told 36Kr.
In 2019, OPPO established a team to develop its own chips, announcing that it will invest 50 billion yuan over the next three years. In November of the same year, OPPO applied for the trademark for its “OPPO M1” in the European Union Intellectual Property Office, which is only a co-processor. Prior to this, OPPO had developed a mature power management chip to support VOOC fast charging.
In February, 2020, OPPO published an article “Some Thoughts on Building Core Technologies”, which put forward three major plans involving chip development, including software development, cloud storage and a “Mariana Plan”. The Mariana Trench is the deepest trench in the world and the plan’s name denotes the higher capabilities of the project.
The investment of the “Mariana Plan” was administered by the Technical Committee within OPPO, which was established in October 2019 and is responsible for the coordination of internal and external resources and the review of key projects. At present, OPPO’s chip team has grown to include over 2,000 people, with a large portion of the company’s R&D personnel hired from Qualcomm and Intel.
In other company news, OPPO’s official Twitter account released a video on Tuesday showing its new retractable lens for smartphones. The new lens will be officially unveiled during INNO DAY on December 14th.
The video shows that the retractable lens features a 1/1.56-inch sensor with a 50mm-equivalent F2.4 lens. The entire slide-out mechanism is water-resistant and capable of withstanding falls.
Earlier, digital blogger @Heidong Digital revealed that OPPO is planning to launch a number of new devices at the INNO Day, including a new folding screen smartphone codenamed “Peacock”, which will be equipped with a Snapdragon 888 processor.
