vivo brought us to Oberkochen, Germany to visit the headquarters of ZEISS, famed optics brand that has had its branding slapped on the former’s phone for a few years now. While we were there, the latter gave us a quick rundown of the brand’s history, the markets that its lenses are involved in, as well as a bit of the way the tech works. The two companies also talked about their cooperation over the years as well.
The Q&A segment following all that though did reveal some pretty surprising details between the two companies of said collab. To start, ZEISS decided working with vivo was a good idea because their goals align. There wasn’t much elaboration, but the optics brand did also mention that it hopes that this working relationship will be a long-term one, just as the one it has with Sony is still ongoing. That being the case, the company is not going out of its way to look for more licensing deals as that sort of branding is not a core business.
As for what this working relationship is like, this involves weekly calls and frequent workshopping with each other. As revealed during the session, both ZEISS and vivo would bring up new ideas as to imaging tech that can be brought from the markets that the optics company in involved in into mobile imaging. There was even mention of dedicated personnel responsible for thinking about new feature implementations.
Now comes what was, to me, the most surprising revelation of the day. When asked if there was any advancement that the pair of companies have achieved as a result of the collab that would have otherwise been impossible or taken longer, one answer we got was the bokeh effects that were specific to ZEISS lenses being available on mobile.
And the reason for this was because it was vivo that decided to emulate the effects via software. The role of the optics company in this scenario was simply to provide consultation and feedback, as it would know its own camera lenses best. If it weren’t for the initiative of the Chinese phone maker, it would not have happened otherwise.
Another response came when asked about if there would be more software imitations of ZEISS lenses on vivo phones such as more bokeh effects. The question was answered with the company’s 178-year history having a rich library of things to pull from, and it’s not set in stone what, if anything, gets emulated.
And on that bombshell…
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