In order to eliminate the need for notches to house a selfie camera on a smartphone’s display, punch-hole cutouts is often considered a good alternative that allowed for more screen estate. Interestingly, a recent alleged patent was uncovered which suggests that Vivo may introduce a smartphone display with a total of 4 punch-hole cameras.
The punch-hole selfie camera housing first made its debut on the Samsung Galaxy S10 earlier this year and ever since then, more smartphone makers have been on board with the approach and adopting it into their current and upcoming line-up of phones. Vivo seems to be upping the ante by providing more than one if their patent is ever implemented to their newer smartphone releases.
According to Tiger Mobiles, the 4 punch-hole cutout patent was filed to the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) earlier this year. The images show designs of individual punch-holes or two pill-shaped cutouts located at each corner of a smartphone display.
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While we don’t exactly know what other sensors are expected to be housed in these cutouts, it is possible that they may feature an ultra-wide lens, a 3D ToF sensor, or maybe gesture sensors like the ones found on the Google Pixel 4. While a single punch-hole or pill-shaped cutout may seem visually acceptable on smartphones now, adding several extras on the display seems to be a bit too much.
As mentioned earlier, this is merely a patent for now with no guarantee that Vivo would actually introduce the design in the future. Having multiple cutouts on a screen may seem weird, but it’s possibly the best option if companies plan to add more features to a smartphone’s front-facing camera.
(Source: Tiger Mobiles.)
