You may have noticed that dual-sensor camera designs were quite popular in 2016, appearing on a handful of phones, including the iPhone 7 Plus, LG G5, Huawei P9 family, and Huawei Mate 9, to name but a few that immediately spring to mind. Of course, the feature isn't that new, it's just the first year in which it's really taken off - HTC was first to market with the tech a while back but poor implementation meant it didn't cut the mustard for its first outing.

There have been plenty of rumours of pretty much every major manufacturer and their forthcoming premium devices packing dual-camera tech at some point or other. However, to date, although its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series have been rumoured for dual-camera tech, so far Samsung hasn't jumped on the bandwagon. 

That could be about to change though. While we should stress as always that mobile tech patents are filed all the time by major OEMs only to never materialise, word has emerged on January 3 2017 that Samsung has filed a patent for a dual-sensor camera.

The patent was picked up by sources in Korea, where it was filed. 

"The diagrams in the 37-page document clearly states that Samsung is aiming to enhance the quality of both the background and objects in the foreground," reports GSMArena.

"The wide-angle lens scans for anything that is a moving object and if there’s any, the second lens - the telephoto one tracks the image in real time and enables you to adjust zoom and other settings without losing focus."

It's tantalising to speculate that such tech might appear in the Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy X or Galaxy Note 8, although given that the Galaxy S8 is pegged to be arriving some time between March and May it seems unlikely there would be time to implement the new tech unless it's already been developed and, frankly, had it already been developed we'd expect to have seen leaks and other details much earlier. Still, it could be a viable candidate for the other two handsets, as these are both rumoured to be coming in the second half of 2017.