The long gap war has ended. We no longer have to argue about tears versus punches, or look for half-hearted solutions like pop-up cameras or hidden cameras at the bottom of the screen. No, you have seen the future, and the future is flying around your face like little plastic mosquitoes. Welcome to Vivo’s latest international patent Posted on WIPOElectronic equipment. This is a phone with a small drone camera inside. I could go into more detail, but the design illustrations seem pretty self-explanatory: a small, ultra-thin plane emerges from the top of the phone into its tiny tray, takes off on a small carousel, and flies around to take pictures. or video, then dock again to charge and save.
There are plenty of small drone designs for concept and full retail kits, but they don’t remind me of anything like the Peter Parker little drone logo in the Stark suit from the last Marvel movie. Technically, the Vivo patent doesn’t actually refer to the design as a “phone”, but, come on. Aside from recharging via the phone’s camera, it makes sense for the phone itself to be a console if you want to do manual shooting.
How likely is this to appear in the phone’s design? I think somewhere between zero and zero tone. Modern phones are designed to take advantage of every cubic micrometer of internal space for components such as batteries, fingerprint readers, advanced radios and cameras. The idea that any phone brought to market would sacrifice a third of its internal volume (or more, depending on the complexity of the mechanics) for a new drone is a bit ridiculous.
Of course, the word “silly” is not the same as “impossible”, and phone makers desperately need gimmicks to make their designs stand out, including damn laser beam. The pop-up phone camera drone might not be as weird as I thought.
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