Last month, a Xiaomi patent showed up depicting a clamshell foldable phone. While the foldable nature of it makes it pretty impressive, it didn’t have any other standout feature. Now a new patent has been granted to the company, depicting a clamshell foldable phone with a popup camera module.
There looks to be three items on the popup module. Dutch site LetsGoDigital says that they are the camera itself, a flash, and another unknown sensor that could help with face detection.
The images from the patent also suggests that the rear camera setup also sits on the module that pops up when the front-facing camera is needed. Here, there are two cameras with a flash, as well as what looks like a dedicated screen for notifications. It’s unclear at this point if you can interact with this secondary display, or of it’s purely a visual indicator.
This is another patent by Xiaomi that deviates from the design of its working prototype. For those who don’t remember, the company showed off their own foldable phones that work much like the Huawei Mate X. But all that said, we haven’t heard much about that particular one since.
(Source: LetsGoDigital via Android Authority)
