Freeform lenses in consumer optics market

Freeform surface is one of the main advanced in lens design over the last two decades. These advances motivated by the new fabrication process and new equipment are now closed to maturity. Recently we start finding on the market more and more camera phone that claims to use freeform lenses. None of these suppliers explained how and why freeform lenses are required in details. In this presentation, we will dive into this to found answers. At the time of writing this abstract, we can identify three camera phones that use freeform lenses. The first one is the Huawei Mate 40 Pro+, which seems to be the first worldwide freeform lens used in a cell phone. Huawei uses the freeform to compensate distortion (they call it ‘anti-distortion’). The lens is an f/1.8 for a 20MP sensor. A second one is the OnePlus 9 Pro, which uses an f/2.2, 7 plastics for a 50MP as an ultra-wide camera. Finally, Oppo Find X3 Pro is also using freeform lens (f/2.2) on an IMX766 50MP (Sony sensor). From all the publicity from those camera-phones, we can found that the freeform used to compensate distortion in the corner of the image. Somehow, we can ask if it is a freeform lens or not, is it only marketing? We will add to this discussion some laboratory results from the Huawei freeform lens as well as image taking with the various cell phone.