Meet the notch killers: pop-up, slide-out cameras

A new smartphone trend is popping up in the tech market, and it’s about to get more popular this 2019.

Notches on phones? Very 2018. Hole-punch displays? Yep, it’s a cool and up-coming trend this 2019. But what else seems to be making a big splash into the smartphone market? Say hello to pop-up and slide-out cameras.

Over the recent years, smartphone manufacturers have been running a race on who gets to achieve that bezel-less display on their phones. And why not? Imagine scrolling through your phone and watching videos seamlessly without a black area obstructing your view on the screen.

Months after Apple released the iPhone X in late 2017, other OEM manufacturers seemed to follow suit except that their phones’ notches have been getting smaller and smaller – which is a good thing, to say the least. More screen real estate, right?

Last February, Samsung tried another tactic in their S10 lineup to achieve a higher screen-to-body ratio: hole-punch displays. Instead of having a black bar at the top of the phone, the camera cut-out is simply drilled underneath the display. Though most people like this fresh aesthetic in comparison to the “notorious” notch, a tiny whole still sits through the display:

So what else can manufacturers do to provide consumers with that immersive “full-screen” design? Perhaps the answer is by hiding the selfie cameras inside the phone and having them pop out when used. Emerging brands like Oppo, Vivo and even tech-giant Samsung seem to think so.

A week ago, Oppo released the Oppo Reno and Oppo Reno 10x Zoom, and both sport a “fishy” standout feature: a shark fin-shaped 16MP pop-up camera:

As mentioned in Anandtech, Oppo claims that the Reno’s motor rises 0.8 seconds at eleven degrees every time it is activated. It also automatically closes whenever the phone detects that it is being dropped.Now with a phone having moving parts, doesn’t this design pose risks of mechanical failures and lose ends over time? Oppo addresses this concern by claiming that the mechanism “can withstand a solid five years of 100-times-per-day usage,” as noted by 9to5google. This means that a person who takes an average of 100 selfies per day is good to go for the next five years to come. This is a bold but reassuming claim from Oppo.

But the Oppo Reno isn’t the only pop-up camera phone that Oppo has released in the market. The company’s mid-range F11 Pro current rocks a motorized 16 MP, f/2.0 pop-up selfie camera situated at the middle of the phone. There’s also the Oppo Find X which was released in July 2018.