Vivo patents slider camera design, NEX model coming?

Vivo has patented a new smartphone design with a slider mechanism. This could potentially be seen in an upcoming smartphone that hasn’t been announced yet. Vivo was the first to launch a phone with a pop-up selfie camera and demo it with the Vivo APEX concept smartphone.

According to 91mobiles, the design images from the patent reveals the slider mechanism of the device. The slider housing lifts vertically and has a camera sensor tucked onto its back. There are three other cameras on the back frame outside of the slider housing. Interestingly, a small hole is visible when the slider lifts upwards which could be an LED flashlight. 

Talking about the front side of the slider, there is a speaker housing in the middle but no front camera is visible here. However, this can very well be a placeholder design. The front design also shows the display with no notches and minimum bezels.

Vivo has been known for innovative designs in the past. It was the first company to adopt an in-display fingerprint sensor and also introduce the pop-up camera design. It is also known to experiment newer designs in its Apex and Nex lineup of smartphones and there is a possibility that this slider camera design could be adopted in one of the two series in future.

The sliding mechanism in smartphones, however, is not new to the market. Earlier, companies like Xiaomi, Oppo, Honor and Lenovo have all released smartphones with a similar design. But the design went off the radar quickly. This could be due to the durability of the sliding mechanism in the long run.

That being said, many design patents are just patents, and the idea of a slider mechanism could also be dropped by Vivo in the future.