Samsung has announced a fancy new 10x optical zoom camera module that it's created for smartphones, and immediately clarified that it'll be selling the tech to other phone manufacturers.

That's no surprise - Samsung manufactures plenty of components that go into other brands' phones, so this will just be the newest, but it's an interesting change for the market.

Optical zoom is the dream for a smartphone camera, but very difficult to achieve at scale while still fitting into the increasingly thin profile of a modern phone. 

The "dual-fold" design has the camera refracting light twice and makes for a flatter design that should fit into more units without such large camera bump being needed - not that we think those are going anywhere for now. 

The last time Samsung used this tech was in 2019 when it managed 5x optical zoom with it, so things have progressed nicely since then, it would seem. 

This new module gets double the zoom performance with a 25% increase in footprint, which is good going, and we'll see whether that sees it picked up by other manufacturers. 

Samsung says it could work in smartphones but also other fields like the automotive space, although we're not entirely sure why a car would need 10x zoom camera - perhaps we'll find out soon enough.