Modular smartphones haven’t taken off as intended and foldable phones have become more popular compared to modular phones even though they were launching a couple of years after the introduction of modular phones.
There are only a couple of companies that launched — Motorola under its Moto Z series and Dutch-based Fairphone are among those. Now, it seems that China-based Xiaomi could be working on a modular smartphone as it has been awarded a patent for the same.
Xiaomi had filed a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for an ‘electronic device.’ The documents revealed a few weeks ago, describes a smartphone that is made of different modules with differing functions.
A concept render of the smartphone based on the images in the patent application has been created by Concept Creator for LetsGoDigital. There are basically three modules — the first one contains the motherboard and the camera system, the second module is for the battery while the third module is the one that forms the underside of the telephone.
Two of those three modules feature a screen and when both of them are connected together, it forms a large display panel without a visible seam. The modules can be attached and removed through a rail-like sliding mechanism.
The company has shown and described two different types of camera modules. One of them is a square-shaped camera system with a triple-camera setup and an LED flash, a design we saw on the company’s Redmi 9C smartphone. There’s also a vertical camera configuration with a quad-camera setup. The lens at the bottom has a square-shaped design, indicating a periscope zoom camera.
As for the front-facing camera, the documents don’t reveal much. At this time, it’s likely to be a punch-hole notch on the display for housing the front camera but the company could also use the under-display camera technology for this.
Xiaomi co-founder and CEO Lei Jun had shared several photos of the Xiaomi Magic Cube modular phone on Weibo a few years back. Although the phone was not released in the market, it appears that the Chinese company is still playing with the idea and could launch a smartphone with a similar concept in the future.
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