lead story Rising; Pop-up, Shark Fin; Flip

Do not get confused by these fancy sounding words, they are mere trends that have come into being in smartphones, to be more precise, into camera department. These latest innovations have peeped into smartphones to make them look different and unique. There’s no denying that these innovations have overcome the challenges of design to finally make it to the original selling models. We stroll down these new design concepts to look if they do actually make sense.

Design Challenge

In order to provide a differentiating viewing experience, mobile manufacturers has incorporated these changes to make the smartphones look huge and endless, what we know it as infinity. The new camera trends have given an opportunity to the Research and Development teams as well to play with rather monotonous mobile designs. The online era has given this opportunity to a mobile user where he or she consumes most of the content on to their phones and to make it a pleasurable experience of something like cinematic effect displays have become more saturated, mature and big. The camera placement has been a key to this technological shift. The bezels have reduced to minimal, selfie camera module has become motorized and slider, placed inside the body of the phonethus, giving an opportunity for mobile makers to experiment more with design.

Acceptability

Since Vivo started this new trend of pop-up camera in India consumers have moved on with it. The design is not alien to them anymore. Initially, there were apprehensions about the durability of these motorized sliding cameras but, with time it also faded away. Urban youth has become familiar with these new concepts of pop-up, sliding, rising, shark fin and now the flip.ever new launch with any of these concepts is a testimony of its acceptability. Recently, Oneplus also introduced the pop-up selfie concept in its 7 series and Oppo adding Shark fininspired selfie camera design in its newly announced series Reno in Oppo Reno 10x Zoom. The latest of them all, Asus, too has fallen in line and has brought another new concept of ‘Flip Camera’ to its recently launched Asus 6Z.

Opportunity

The new concepts; pop-up, sliding, rising, shark fin and flip, could not have been possible without the support of chipset makers. Similarly, a good battery is also a must have to sustain them because most of them run on a motorized mechanism that uses battery. Chipset manufacturers have given wings to these new trends as without them it would not have been an easy task to achieve. Fast, efficient and snappy processor is a prerequisite to hold on to commands and processing of the mechanism which they use.the new age processors were quite instrumental in bringing these new changes in design.

What’s Next

We have to wait and watch for what is next in store for us. The very recent is going to be the under-display cameras like what we are witnessing with in-display fingerprint scanner. Companies have tried everything to make their smartphones stand out among the rest. The R&D teams of these companies will not sit idle and surely come with more interesting than these prevailing trends. Till then, whether you like it or not but these new design changes have changed the way we used to look at smartphones. There may be arguments in favour and against these concepts but, at the end of the day it’s all personal. You like like to flaunt the rising selfie lens in public, I may not. The lover would say that these concepts have allowed them to experiment things which would not have been possible earlier as the design was monotonous. The pop-up, shark fin, flick camera, etc. are not just anything but, a hell lot of trials and experiments have gone into it. Companies have invested a lot into their research and development. There are critics too that are too hard to please. Somebody will doubt the durability; others will question the need of it as it attracts unwanted eyes every time it pops out of the body. Face unlock becomes messy. Dust and moisture might creep in. The response time might increase when the phone gets old. The pop-up, rising, shark fin and flick are interesting and intriguing concepts to enjoy if you love to experiment and not for those who stick to the basics. Its massy, not classy! ■