Huawei has previously included a 10-speed variable aperture lens with a six-blade opening and closing design in the Mate 50 series and P60 series. According to a newly published patent, Huawei is going one step further with a variable aperture lens.

A search by IT Home on the website of the State Intellectual Property Office found that a patent for a "variable aperture device" applied by Huawei Technologies Co LTD was published on May 23, bringing a new method of variable aperture.

'In a conventional camera module, the f number is fixed and cannot be changed,' the patent description says. This is because the size of the camera module increases due to the mechanical equipment required to change the F-number. Therefore, a compact mechanical device intended to be mounted on the miniature camera module is required to adjust the F-number.

The previous patent discloses a device with a variable aperture that includes multiple blades. The blades are moved by actuators in the device. The rotor including the blade is actuated by an actuator arranged outside the aperture unit. However, in order to control the size of the aperture, the device does not directly detect the position of the rotor, but rather the movement of the actuator set outside the aperture unit. These problems make it difficult to reduce the size of a variable aperture device. In addition, it is difficult to properly control the position of the blade, i.e. the size of the aperture.

One purpose of the invention is to provide a miniature device with a variable aperture suitable for a miniature camera module. Another purpose of the invention is to correctly control the size of the aperture by directly detecting the position of the rotor.

The variable aperture device includes:

• At least one coil arranged around an axis at least partially around a lens barrel having a lens connected to an external power supply;

• At least one magnetic sensor;

• A rotor is mounted on the coil to surround the lens barrel and includes at least one magnet disposed toward the coil and the magnetic sensor;

• A plurality of blades are arranged around the axis, wherein the blades are matched with each other to form an aperture, coupled to the rotor, and relatively mobile relative to the rotor, wherein, due to supply current to the coil, the rotor rotates around the axis and moves the blade, thus changing the aperture size of the hole.

According to bloggers @Digital Chat Site and @Primfocus Digital, this could be Huawei's "polar structure lens", which previously only supported 10 stops, but the new technology is expected to have stepless aperture adjustment and a telescreen stack.