Optical zoom is one thing which has kept Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot phones away from being an excellent image shooting device. In order to make a match for competitors, Sony Ericsson has been working on a 3x optical zoom camera phone and images of it have already started leaking.

The images that have sprung over the internet offer little information whether this 3x optical zoom enabled handset is a brand new phone, or just an upgraded version of an older model. One thing is certain though. The device looks as real as possible, so we may actually see it on the market too sometime in the future.

The mysterious Cybershot phone has a shape highly similar to that of older K850i model, although the main difference rests in the innovative performance. There's a slight hump on the phone's back in order to pack the zoom module package, probably one under 20 mm.

There is no word on the handset's other features. This also includes the camera's resolution, although there are high chances for it to be a 5 megapixel one. This, combined with the new 3 x optical zoom, should make the Cybershot phone capable of providing captures at a quality similar to that of regular digital cameras. That would be a fairly interesting thing to see, especially as the main drawback of camera phones used to be the lower quality, even at the same resolution as regular digital devices.

If such a phone will really come in the near future, it would mean one huge step forward in the case of Sony Ericsson's Cybershot line of phones. Lately, rival producers have made up a serious competition for them, taking away some of the credit that their special line has enjoyed.