On the Galaxy A80, the rear cameras and the front cameras are the same.
Samsung
What if the
Galaxy Note 10
or next year's Galaxy S11 had a slide-out camera with lenses that capture your selfies before you turn around to take a portrait of your dog? Thanks to
Samsung's
Start this week the
Galaxy A80
, which has exactly this camera setup, the possibility is no longer pure substance.
If Samsung thought this slide-out, pivoting camera was good enough for a mid-range phone, it's certainly good enough for the brand's most advanced Android device, right? To be honest, I'm curious about the design I'm talking about since I first saw it on the 2014
Oppo N1
, an innovative rotating camera phone for Asia.
It all started with the Oppo N1.
Aloysius Low/CNET
It's been years
phones
panning, tilting and otherwise moving were en vogue, but that's changing.
Foldable phones like those from Samsung
Galaxy Fold
and
Huawei's Mate X
both arouse and reflect an interest in poseable design. Cameras are also becoming more mechanized to emerge from the animal's belly in various ways.
Both the sliding camera and foldable trends fill the need to ultimately give you more screen to work with. In the case of a slide-up camera, this is intended to solve the problem of sensors cluttering the screen "Notch" has not won many fans, perhaps it will be a slider camera array.
Here are four reasons why it might make sense for Samsung to bring the Galaxy A80's slide-up swivel camera to a higher-end Samsung phone like the Note 10 or Galaxy S11, and three reasons it might not.
Samsung did not respond to a request for comment.
Read
:
After the Galaxy Fold fiasco, Note 10 could be the hero phone Samsung needs
Better photos, smarter design
I've been fascinated (ahem, obsessed) with camera panning since the Oppo N1 days because it struck me as an elegant solution.
Why double your cameras or use a sub-par front sensor for your selfies when you can use your best cameras for self-portraits too? What if instead of one company buying half a dozen cameras for the front?
and
back they only bought four to do the job of six.
This Galaxy A80 camera module slides out of the case, leaving an uninterrupted screen.
Samsung
More importantly, with the camera doing double duty, your selfie image quality and the number of things you could potentially do with a selfie could also increase as Samsung wouldn't save its best cameras for the rear anymore.
Samsung starts a pattern
The Galaxy S10 phones weren't the first to get the "notch" punch-hole camera, using a display Samsung calls an Infinity-O design. It wasn't either
Galaxy S10 5G
the first Samsung phone with four rear cameras. Samsung saved both of these milestones for phones in its mid-range Galaxy A series.
Currently running:
Look at that:
New leaks of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10
6:26
It was the
Galaxy A8s
that served as a practice run for them
Galaxy S10 notch
, and the
Galaxy A9
which integrated four rear cameras four months before the launch of the S10.
The question is: why would Samsung use these cheaper devices as a test bed for more premium phones? Perhaps the company is trying to be more cautious after introducing new technologies
Galaxy Note 7
Disaster where reports of self-burning batteries prompted Samsung to
Call the device back twice
.
Of course, it's extremely unlikely that a screen cutout will result in flames, but chances are the brand will be on the lookout for early issues to make course corrections or delay the launch of a flagship phone if necessary.
The Galaxy S10 5G wasn't Samsung's first phone with four rear cameras.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Pop up cameras are so hot right now
It's also possible that Samsung's interest in pop-up cameras has everything to do with the trend among other smartphone makers in Asia (remember, Samsung is from South Korea). Funnily enough, the three main proponents of mechanized cameras are --
oppo
, Vivo and
OnePlus
(Rumored) -- All Chinese brands are owned by the same company,
BBK electronics
.
the
Oppo F11 Pro
and
Vivo Next
both feature a small, square, pop-up selfie camera (but not the
Nex dual display edition
).The
OnePlus 7
is rumored to get the same.
Then there's sexy from last year
Oppo Find X
, whose entire lid rises like the Galaxy A80.And
Oppo Reno
, whose 16-megapixel front-facing camera snaps open at an angle "like a shark's fin," my colleague Katie Collins colorfully put it, "or a piece of brie." (Mmmm, brieeeeee.)
Note that none of these pop-up themes are rotatable.
Samsung's biggest competitor Huawei, also from China, doesn't have a pop-up camera yet. But the foldable Mate X uses its camera array for both types of photos, flipping the phone to take a selfie or a photo, and a use its two outer "screens" as viewfinders.
Currently running:
Look at that:
The Oppo Find X phone is absolutely sexy
1:56
(Technically, there's really only an 8-inch curve-out screen, but when the Mate X folds into phone mode you get active screen windows on the front and back)
Could Samsung's first foray into an all-in-one camera array be its way to innovate against Huawei's relentless approach? If so, it would surely have a feature with the most wow factor on its side
top phones
.
Mechanized parts still risk breaking something
Not every argument for a swiveling camera on the Galaxy Note 10 or Galaxy S11 makes sense.
The more complex a phone is, the more chance there is of something going wrong. What if something happened to the motor driving the action? Could the mechanism move if something got stuck or jammed?
The Vivo Nex was the first to unfold its camera, but it won't be the last.
James Martin/CNET
Or what if the phone falls as the camera pops out and has a hard hit that prevents it from retreating? And what if the mechanism slows down over time?
Of course, there are concerns about wear and tear, and of course Samsung will have tested the slider camera within an inch of its life. But yes, bad things do happen to good phones and unflattering reports are a risk.
Do 6 cameras sound more noble than 4?
At a time when more cameras are being marketed to make a phone appear better - or at least more capable - there might be an issue where Samsung would need to educate the public about having the same camera on the front and back (I'm randomly) select four) might as well be six, the total on the Galaxy S10 5G?
Do you want a reversible swivel camera?
Samsung
Note 10 vs Galaxy S11: Which is more likely?
When it comes to actually considering which phone would be more likely to get a pivoting camera, the Note 10 or the Galaxy S11, my "pro" arguments crumble.
We're about four months away from the Note 10 launch if Samsung meets its August timeframe. Wouldn't a leak as significant as a pivoting camera have already surfaced? And would Samsung have a slide-up camera on one with this S Pen stylus Want to set a phone that already has its own identity?
On the other hand, the Galaxy S series is more of the bread-and-butter family that was the "safer" choice, while Samsung reserves some of its more interesting experiments for the Note series or for other phones.
Best hidden Galaxy S10 features you need to know right now
View all photos
+53 more
However with
four Galaxy S10 devices
In 2019, it could make sense for Samsung to release the most expensive Galaxy S11 variant of 2020 with a pop-up camera.
There's only one other way a rotating camera could appear in a high-end Samsung phone, and that's foldable. It's been rumored (and logical too) that Samsung will be making other foldable phones.
I'm not sure what the design would need to be to make a slide up panning camera, but I'm sure Samsung's designers and engineers played around with everything.
Originally posted April 11 at 5:30pm PT.
