Emir Bardakçı
There have actually been rumors online that the Redmi K80 series will come with a “pop-up camera” design. In fact, some speculations went as far as including a “preview image” of the device. Not surprisingly, Wang Teng has come out to deny the existence of such a design on Weibo. He is the deputy general manager of Xiaomi China’s marketing department and also general manager of the Redmi brand.
Statement from Xiaomi:
Today, Wang Teng addressed those rumors on Weibo, saying: “It won’t be a pop-up camera, it will have a huge impact on the overall design. Now everyone is used to the form of a front camera hole, right?” This has now made things crystal clear that Xiaomi will not bring the pop-up camera design back for the Redmi K80 series.
Camera on Lift No?
Wang Teng’s view is consistent with the trend in the industry to abandon mechanical pop-up cameras altogether. In fact, a pop-up camera would amount to a lot of work on the overall design of the device in terms of thickness, as well as durability among other aspects. Now the mainstream design of smartphones already forms a consensus of front camera holes, common among many referred to as “punch holes,” so to use the pop-up mechanism may not be right in the context of consumer preference as well as design aesthetics.
Support from Industry Insiders
More supporters in the comments under the post on Weibo argued with it further, including such an experienced tech blogger as Li Ang Ang, who noted that the mechanical pop-up structure of the front camera is already an anachronism and remains unsuitable for current market trends. According to his note, even companies that have been applying pop-up camera designs in the past don’t have many similar components in stock anymore and therefore, in fact, do not invest in this type of technology.
History of Full-Screen Designs at Xiaomi
Worth mentioning here, there had been a couple of full-screen designs that Xiaomi tried. Within 2019-2020, many models were launched with the mechanism of a pop-up camera, such as the Redmi K20/Pro and Redmi K30 Pro. For 2018, Xiaomi released the MIX 3 which housed, under its sliding cover design, the promise of a “true full-screen” experience.
With Wang Teng’s statement, it signals that Xiaomi is going back to the direction of more minimalistic and practical designs for its smartphones, meaning getting rid of those complicated mechanical parts in their build and user experience. Meaning, fans should probably now expect more devices with design in tune with current trends, using front camera holes rather than pop-up mechanisms. It looks like Xiaomi is further innovating into other aspects of the world of smartphones while keeping the design simple and preferring what the customer would like to see rather than coming up with new and complicated designing features.
