Modular phone patent filed by Xiaomi

The modular phone is nothing new, it has been on the minds of some manufacturers for years. They even teased the idea of a LEGO mobile phone, but it never came to anything. It's not like Xiaomi is going to do it now either, it just filed a patent.

The patent is again filed with the LetsgoDigital has made it spectacular, which shows you all about the modular design. The Xiaomi modular phone would consist of three main units:

• Camera and motherboard
• Battery
• Speaker and USB

Camera

The first drawing shows the structure, but we didn't know that the screen was a separate unit. In the picture above this is already confirmed, the fourth main unit, the screen. As you can see, the camera and motherboard unit can be quite varied, you can equip your phone with a simple camera or even a serious periscope camera. But a secondary screen could also fit in the top module.

Battery

The battery module is almost incomprehensible to me, because who wouldn't want to choose the biggest one possible. Well I figured there is only one of these and it is separate for easy replacement. But with the technology constantly evolving over the years, it can be very important, because you can always get better, higher capacity in the same size.

USB

The bottom one might also be interesting, although there's not much choice of USB modules, only Type-C at the moment, but that could change in the future. The speaker, on the other hand, could be chosen in terms of price, whether plain, Harman/Kardon or JBL. Speaking of which, a stereo speaker could be chosen for the camera module. Now that's cool!

The main strength of modular design is not the optional components, but the ease of interchangeability. If something breaks, you only have to buy and replace that module yourself. Goodbye service! Although the patent doesn't mention the screen, it could be that it's on the other side of the modules and they're connected almost imperceptibly. Until it's done, we won't answer that.

This is not Xiaomi's first modular phone idea, Xiaomi CEO, dreamed up such a phone back in 2013 with the concept of the best phone of its time, the Xiaomi Mi 3. Even though only the camera and battery module were interchangeable, that would have been a big step forward.

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