A patent filed by LG and spotted by Tiger Mobiles, show that the South Korean handset maker is developing a smartphone with three front-facing cameras.
In sketches LG included with its patent application, an elongated notch above the handset’s display houses the three selfie cameras. The notch also contains a smaller cutout, which will likely accommodate the proximity and ambient light sensor of the handset.
Meanwhile, the back of the smartphone also contains a horizontally-arranged triple rear-camera setup and located below those units is the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. The device’s back panel shares a similar design with some of LG’s latest flagship handsets, including the LG V50 ThinQ 5G.
The sketches included with the patent also show that the handset will include a dedicated button for the Google Assistant, in addition to the power button and the volume rocker. The bottom of the handset houses a USB Type-C port, and speaker grills. Those sketches also show that this phone includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, much like the LG G8 ThinQ and V50 ThinQ 5G, the latest flagship offerings from the company.
LG is amongst handset makers that pioneered the inclusion of multiple cameras into smartphones. The South Korean tech firm included two rear cameras back in 2011 in the LG Optimus 3D, while the LG V10, which the company launched in 2015, featured two front-facing cameras with resolutions of 5 megapixels each. One of the cameras sported a wide-angle lens with a field of view of 120-degrees, while another selfie shooter included an 80-degree standard-angle lens. The trend of adding wide-angle lenses with the front-facing cameras continued with LG’s latest handset, the V50 ThinQ 5G.
In addition to wide-angle lenses, LG also started including Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors with its flagship smartphones, like the LG G8 ThinQ. ToF sensors allow the handset to create better portrait images, and essentially capture depth-related actions far better. It is unclear whether the phone shown in the provided sketches will include such a sensor, but if that ends up being the case, it will ship with similar features as the LG G8 ThinQ and the V50 ThinQ 5G.
Recent patent applications show that LG is developing a variety of designs for its smartphones, although it is likely that some of these patents will not result in a commercialized product.
One recent patent suggests that LG is working on a handset with 16 rear cameras arranged in different angles, forming either concave or convex grids. The smartphone can capture multiple images using all the sensors, and it could generate photographs using the data obtained from various sensors, likely through the use of computational photography algorithms.
Another patent registration shows that the South Korean tech firm recently developed a smartphone with an oval-shaped display cutout hole. This design allows the handset to offer a bezel-less design. As is usually the case, smartphone manufacturers patent all sorts of different designs, and then choose the ones they think are best suited for the markets at any particular moment, and designs that they think are best overall.
