OPPO’s double-sided pop-up camera smartphone – How is it better than Xiaomi’s design?

Everything about OPPO’s Double-Sided Pop-Up Camera Design

The pop-up selfie camera was taken very well by smartphone users despite having the start-up delay. It’s quite an eye-catching and futuristic feature but the most important reason was the real full view display with no notch at all. Vivo was the first smartphone maker to introduce the pop-up selfie camera. OPPO didn’t wait to see the market’s reaction before adopting the feature.

OPPO, later, brought a different design of elevating camera in its Reno2 smartphone. More recently, the company reportedly patented a circular pop-up camera. Now it seems the company has another thing in its pocket with regard to the pop-up camera module. Until now we had seen variations in the elevating camera modules design. Now we are going to see a double-sided pop-up camera with both the front and rear shooters.

Reported by LetsGoDigital, OPPO had filed a patent for such a design in the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO).  The company applied for the patent in March 2020 that published later in October 2020.

According to design, OPPO will use two prism mirrors in a single dual-camera pop-up module. The moving module will only carry reflective mirrors. Cameras will not move along and will sit inside the housing facing up.

Both the mirrors are rotatable independently to change the direction back and forth. With this flexibility, OPPO will be able to use both cameras in different combinations.

For example, it can use both cameras to take a selfie or photo from the rear side. It can use one camera with the mirror facing the front side, and the other camera with the mirror backwards. Remember the Bothie feature Nokia introduced a couple of years ago in Nokia 8? It’s the same thing. Not to mention the recent Galaxy S21 also offering the same camera model.

The later example of both mirrors facing opposite sides can also help in taking 360° photos by only rotating the camera up to 180 degrees.

A designer Concept Creator rendered the following for LetsGoDigital to better visualize the OPPO’s patented design of the pop-up camera module.

According to patent application details, OPPO may use a dedicated multifunction button to operate the camera. Such as pressing once or twice can turn it into selfie or rear shooter. It could be possible to activate single or both cameras.

Xiaomi, last month, was reported to have patented a similar design but with a single/wide reflective mirror. Its “Concealed Camera” design also intends to only move the mirror module but not the cameras itself. However, it’s not as flexible as OPPO’s design with two separate reflective mirrors.

Just add into innovation dish, Samsung’s rotatable pop-up camera also meant to serve for both rear and selfie shooting. I personally love the pop-up camera mechanism only to have a fully bezel-less display experience. Now when cameras made for regular purpose can serve better for selfies in such design patterns, it really should be appealing.

If you say that this will offer better camera experience in low-cost design than the under-display cameras, it won’t be incorrect. What do you say about it? let us know in the comments below.