Samsung to release a Varioptic Liquid Lens cameraphone this year?

Remember that Varioptic liquid lens we told you 'bout a few years back? You know, that oil and water mixture which can be flattened via the application of voltage to achieve focus without using traditional servos or coil-based systems. Yeah, well Varioptics had some prototypes on display at 3GSM last week and Mobileburn was there to check out the lens retrofitted into a Sunex camera module with a TransChip sensor. The entire auto-focus system is free of moving parts, requires only 5-15% the power at 1/3 the cost of traditional systems, and features a 20 diopter range of focus capable of focusing on objects as close as 5-centimeters. And according to MobileBurn, quality from the prototype "seemed reasonable" for a non-production unit. Then again, Varioptic need not aim too high to better the images produced by those plastic camera phone lenses they hope to start replacing as early as Q3 when Samsung "might issue" a commercial release of a Varioptic equipped camera phone.