OnePlus Concept One Smartphone with disappearing cameras "Now you see it, now you don't"

Fast forward to still on-going CES 2020 event, though it might have ended by the time you’d be reading this article, OnePlus has unveiled it’s first ever Concept smartphone, and they named it the OnePlus Concept One.

OnePlus Concept One

Now aside from it being just a concept device, meaning that it is not expected to be sold globally, there are quite a handful of things to be excited about, on this device.

With the most significant of them all being for the fact that instead of having hidden rear cameras that slides into the phone chassis just the way some manufacturers have done in the past, such as the likes of Oppo with the Oppo Find X smartphone in 2018.

OnePlus’s own disappears into the phone’s rear glass completely.. Okay maybe not like 100% completely, but something that looks like this..

Now this means that, unlike Oppo’s solution way back in 2018, that makes use of two separate glasses, one which the camera lenses sit on, and the second one which covers the camera lenses when you slide them in, OnePlus’s own makes use of just a single piece of glass.

But not your everyday glass though. We’re talking of glass that can go from transparent (to reveal the camera sensors), to Opaque (to hide the camera sensors), in just 0.7 secs according to OnePlus. And the witchcraft behind this technology, is known as “Electro-chromic glass technology

Now in case you don’t know, electrochromic glasses, or smart glasses, isn’t a new thing, as it’s been around for some time before now.

And what this does is that it allows materials such as glass and plastics to change their states, whether from fully transparent, to completely opaque or vice versa, when a certain amount of electricity is passed through them.

Now I’m not really into glasses and how they work, so I’m not gonna go into details of how this thing works. But if you’d still want to read further, I’ll ask you to check out these links to see everything you need to know about electrochromism, and how it is being applied to glasses.

Read Also
▪ What is Electrochromic Glass – smartglassinternational
▪ 10 Technologies Used in Green Construction (Electrochromic smart glass) – HowStuffWorks
▪ What is electrochromic glass and how does it work? – Android Authority

Now aside from the disappearing camera trick on this device, the OnePlus Concept One is still pretty much a OnePlus 7T Pro, under the hood.

OnePlus Concept One

It ships with the same triple rear camera setup as the original OnePlus 7T Pro which includes;

  1. A 48MP wide lens.
  2. A 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom capabilities, and;
  3. A 16MP Ultrawide lens.

In terms of hardware, you getting the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor with 12GB of RAM, same 6.67 Inch Fluid AMOLED display with 90Hz refresh rate, a beefy 4085mAh battery to keep all that running, and with 30W fast charging capabilities, in case you ever run out of juice.

Though in terms of designing, OnePlus took a kind of completely different approach by making the OnePlus’s Concept One back leather, and since OnePlus is supporting the McLaren brand, the color of the phone is actually’s McLaren signature papaya orange that is found on most of their super cars.

Now back to the electrochromic glasses and disappearing cameras on the OnePlus Concept One smartphone. The question remains;

Is this feature really necessary, how those it the new OnePlus phone any more useful than its competing counterparts? Do you think this is something that OnePlus and other smartphone manufacturers will begin implementing on their future smartphones?

Well..

The thing is, first of all, I’ve seen a couple of Youtube videos where some top tech youtubers (Mr Whose The Boss), thinks that this is just one of those many gimmicky concept features and specs that are being showcased year after year at the CES event. And he doesn’t really think this is something that’s gonna be useful both now and in the future.

But personally, forgetting about the added cost of owning a smartphone with this type of glass when they finally arrive, because they will definitely do, i think this is a rather more useful feature than it just being a gimmick as most top tech websites and youtubers have labelled it to be.

We are at a time when all smartphone manufacturers are in a race to win who puts the most rear cameras on their smartphones. Today we have smartphones featuring up to four and five rear cameras on them, and before this year ends, that number might be increasing to six or seven, on just one smartphone.

Now having as much cameras as possible on a smartphone is good, but what about its looks?. Here’s a picture of the Apple iPhone 11 and iPhone 10.

You can’t tell me that the iPhone 11 looks much better than the 10, never. So what ami trying to say in essence?

Aside from cost, having something like this on smartphones, to me is a very great idea, as it can help to hide those increasing numbers of camera lenses at the back of our smartphones.

MKBHD also mentioned something about our smartphones changing colors, but let’s leave that for now, and talk about how this feature can be really useful, in our future smartphones. #Peace..


#Cheers..emmanuelGodwin

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