According to a new report that surfaced online, Xiaomi’s Product Manager, Wang Teng Thomas, allegedly hinted that the company may introduce at least one smartphone with a pop-up selfie camera in the near future. This report comes from Xiaomi Today, and Xiaomi’s product manager allegedly said that in the comments section on Weibo (Chinese social network), but a link to that comment was not provided, so we could not verify the report.
Most of you know that Xiaomi already announced a smartphone with a sliding camera mechanism, the Mi MIX 3, a phone which was more or less well received. Well, if the provided report is true, Xiaomi will try its luck in the pop-up camera department as well, and by that, we mean only its front-facing camera, similar to the Vivo NEX.
So, instead of creating a sliding camera mechanism that requires you to slide the phone, like back in the day, Xiaomi is allegedly planning to create an automated mechanism which would hide and show a selfie camera depending on whether you’re in the selfie camera department of the camera app, or not.
If this report ends up being true, and Xiaomi really does go down this road, the Mi MIX 4 could be the device to do it. The Mi MIX 3 was announced back in October last year, and the Mi MIX 4 is not expected to arrive until Q4 this year, but it is possible that it will ship with a pop-up camera, just so that Xiaomi can keep its bezels extremely thin without introducing a notch or a display hole to the phone’s design.
The Mi MIX 3S may become a reality in the next month or two, as Xiaomi did introduce the Mi MIX 2S in March last year, as a follow-up to the Mi MIX 2, but we’re still not sure whether Xiaomi will announce it or not. If the company sticks to the Mi MIX 2 and Mi MIX 2S recipe, the Mi MIX 3S will include a sliding camera mechanism, and we will not really see any major changes in the design department, but who knows.
Xiaomi had introduced its new flagship quite recently, the Mi 9. The Xiaomi Mi 9 takes a more common approach to design, without sliding camera mechanisms or display holes. The device is made out of metal and glass, and it sports a really small, teardrop notch on the front. Other than that, it also has a really thin “chin” below the display, while the rest of its bezels are basically non-existent.
The Xiaomi Mi 9 is quite a powerful handset, it is fueled by the Snapdragon 855 64-bit octa-core processor, while it comes in both 6GB and 8GB RAM variants. The Mi 9 includes a 6.39-inch fullHD+ Super AMOLED display, and it ships with an in-display fingerprint scanner. The device includes three cameras on the back, including a 48-megapixel main unit. A 3,300mAh battery is also a part of the package, and the phone also supports extremely fast charging. If you’d like to know more about the Mi 9, feel free to check out our official announcement article.