WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
As tech miniaturises concepts like this become increasingly feasible… and many more.
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Everyone loves drones. Everyone loves smartphones. And everyone loves cameras. And soon you might be able to get all of these in a single awesome gadget – that is if a new patent showing a “detachable camera module that can fly like a drone” from Vivo gets the green light.
We all know that in time almost all tech gets smaller, lighter, more performant, and cheaper and this is a great example of that trend in action. According to a LetsGoDigital report, the Chinese tech giant filed the patent images for the smartphone a while ago and as you can see it appears to have a design similar to a modern smartphone but something is unique about the camera that will be housed on the handset’s bottom part.
When the camera pops out from the device, its four propellers make it capable of flight, and it comes equipped with its own battery and three embedded infrared proximity sensors to make sure it doesn’t hit anything.
Furthermore, as all operations are entirely on the smartphone, in case of low power, charging the phone will charge the camera battery simultaneously, and as the flying camera has to be both light and small, the flight distance will probably be limited.
