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Huawei patent shows smartphone camera with detachable lens

Huawei's patent registration in Europe features a device with detachable lens support as well as a professional camera

Since the Huawei started a partnership with Leica, the Chinese brand has stood out from competitors for the quality of its smartphone camera – so much so that the P40 Pro considered the owner of the best camera on the market in four of the six categories analyzed by DxOMark. And a recently found patent indicates that the company is striving to further improve the quality of its cameras.

According to a design patent registered by Huawei at the European Union Intellectual Property Institute (EUIPO), the company would be developing a kind of support for its smartphones that would allow the user to fit a external detachable lens on the device, in a way similar to how professional photo cameras work.

At patentIt is possible to see the design of the back of a smartphone that consists of a flash module, two smaller lenses and a larger lens with a fitting scheme for the user to connect an external module. The document also talks about the device shown in the patent having a grooved body, which would help to make the user's footprint more firm when using the smartphone to take pictures.

huawei patent camera with detachable lens Patent filed by Huawei that shows what would be the design of a smartphone with a slot for external camera modules (Image: GizmoChina)

Despite being something different, the attempt to create cell phones that accept external camera modules is not exactly new. THE Motorola already tried to do something similar to the Moto Mod, which ended up not being the success expected by the company. There are also accessories that allow you to connect an external lens to the smartphone, but these replace the device's internal cameras, while Huawei's patent is intended to serve as a complement to them.

What does this change on Huawei cameras?

Currently, the Huawei P40 Pro the only smartphone on the market to offer 10x optical zoom, using a periscope type lens for this. Despite being the best optical zoom found for a smartphone, the periscope type lenses still offer a lower quality than conventional lenses (which are larger), which means that this system cannot yet compete on equal terms with that of a professional photo camera.

This existing difference can be narrowed if the Huawei manage to develop a system for using modular external lenses. Because you no longer have to worry about the total space – after all, there are a multitude of other components that need to fit in the body of a cell phone in addition to the camera – it is possible to bet on the use of larger lenses that offer an image quality closer a professional camera.

patent huawei camera Rendering that shows how the final version of the smartphone registered in the patent would look (Image: GizmoChina)

In theory, an external module could not only offer optical zoom options greater than 10x for the brand's smartphones, but also help to put the company's smartphones in the full domain of the camera category. According to the most recent DxOMark, the P40 Pro is not the best camera on the market in terms of wide-angle and bokeh effects – something that could theoretically be solved using external modules.

But, of course, we must always remember that we should not consider patent discoveries as major revelations. This is because it is common for companies to register patents for equipment that will never be manufactured or even come out of paper. Thus, a patent is not necessarily an indication of something that we should find in stores within the next few years, but rather an indication of what ways to improve a product are being studied within a company.

Source: GizmoChina, DxOMark