Xiaomi has a rather unusual idea about how to hide the camera on the front of the smartphone. Its new implementation completely excludes face unlocking.
Smartphone manufacturers are trying in various ways to escape from the notches in the screens of devices, trying to find a place for the front cameras. Currently, probably the most popular option is to make holes in the screens to fit a small camera with a single or dual lens. It seems that this style is unlikely to pass quickly unless there is a breakthrough in developing technology to hide the camera under the display layer.
Xiaomi, although it will probably like to use such technology, also has other ideas. The latest one is really strange and immediately raises many questions.
Xiaomi patents a smartphone with a twisting camera
The Chinese Patent Office (CNIPA, China National Intellectual Property Administration) registered the receipt of an application from Xiaomi, which presented its own way to get rid of notches and holes in the screen. They suggest installing a single, rotatable main camera module, which would also serve as a selfie camera if needed.
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This is not a new idea, because it is already present in mass-produced devices – for example, in Asus ZenFone 6. There, however, only the camera turns, and according to the Xiaomi patent, part of the display would also rotate.
I don’t really see this solution in practice – in reality, Xiaomi would have to use two displays here. When rotating the camera around the vertical axis, the working surface of the screen would have to be reduced. This because a big camera module would land in front, and the current upper part of the display would go to the back of the device.
This type of solution practically excludes the use of face recognition technology. Although, given the above challenges, this obstacle seems to be the smallest.
Personally, I think that this patent is simply crazy and extremely difficult to implement. I don’t expect it to be in use on any of the upcoming Xiaomi smartphones. And probably it will be better for everyone if the Chinese simply forget about this solution.
