According to a new report by XDA Developers, Xiaomi is actually developing two new flagship smartphones, and both of them feature pop-up cameras. These two phones are codenamed “davinci” and “raphael”, says the source.
The source claims that Xiaomi “substantially accelerated” the development of pop-up camera hardware support, and while the “davinci” smartphone has been in testing for quite some time (with a pop-up camera design), the “raphael” handset was added quite recently.
These are both not only flagship-grade devices, but are the only two smartphones with such design that Xiaomi is testing at the moment, at least the only ones we’re aware of. The code actually suggests that the camera will pop up mechanically on both of these phones, as the code mentions both words “appearing” and “retracting”.
The source also says that both of these phones are fueled by the Snapdragon 855, which explains the “flagship” tag mentioned earlier. Both of these phones will also include in-display fingerprint scanners, most probably optical ones. Now, it is safe to assume that both of these phones will arrive to India, as Xiaomi started developing separate MIUI software releases for the Indian market, and those releases are codenamed “davinciin” and “raphaelin”, which clearly suggests they’re made for the “davinci” and “raphael” smartphones.
That is pretty much all the info that XDA was able to share at this point, as it’s the only info that it has at the moment. It is safe to assume that both of these phones will have pretty powerful hardware, though, and extremely thin bezels. The fact that they will include pop-up cameras suggests that a display notch / hole will not be included at all. A thin “chin” will probably be placed below the display, but that’s more or less it.
If we had to bet, we’d say that both phones will ship with fullHD+ displays, though it remains to be seen whether Xiaomi will utilize OLED panels, or LCD ones in order to save some money. The two devices are expected to ship with Android 9 Pie out of the box, and the company MIUI 10 Android overlay.
It is worth noting that these two smartphones may become the company’s very first handsets with a pop-up camera setup. The company did introduce the Mi MIX 3 slider, but that phone has a sliding camera setup, not a pop-up one, and that’s technically not the same thing.
Pop-up camera setups are making a comeback, it seems, at least as far as Chinese smartphone manufacturers are concerned. OPPO had recently introduced its Reno flagship, and its mid-range counterpart, both of which feature a pop-up camera setup, the so-called shark fin camera setup.
OnePlus will probably introduce its very first smartphone with a pop-up camera soon as well, the OnePlus 7 Pro. The OnePlus 7 will include a teardrop notch based on recent leaks, but the “Pro” model will include a regular pop-up camera, and thus avoid including both notches and display holes. The device is expected to get announced on May 14, both of them are, actually. We’re still not sure when will Xiaomi introduce the two phones we’ve mentioned in this article, though.