I'm not saying anything new by saying that Xiaomi has a lot of patents that have advanced mobile technology. A new patent on "camera module and electronic equipment" was recently granted by Beijing Xiaomi Mobile Software Co., Ltd.
"The present disclosure relates to a camera module and an electronic device, which belongs to the technical field of electronic equipment. The camera module includes a connector frame and a plurality of lenses disposed in the connector frame, the connector frame including a connector deformation portion. When the camera module is inoperative, the connector deformation portion is in a first form. The optical axes of the individual lenses are parallel to each other and the plurality of lenses are offset relative to each other. When the camera module is in an operational state, the connector deformation part is in a second form. When the camera module is in the operational state, the coupling deformation portion is in the second shape and the lenses are arranged in layers with the optical axes of each lens overlapping each other."
"The present disclosure provides a joining deformation portion on the joining frame of a plurality of lenses. It changes the relative position between the plurality of lenses by changing the shape of the connection deformation portion such that the plurality of lenses are staggered. When not in operation, and multiple lenses are laminated when in working position, multiple shooting needs can be realized using a single camera module."
I can almost see your twisted face, what now? The patent is very similar to the Xiaomi 12S Ultra concept phone. If you remember, this is the phone that you can attach an external lens to, which I wrote about earlier. So the patent above is something like that, but it's all built into the phone. It uses a single sensor, by switching lenses, or placing them behind each other, to solve the now standard 3-4 camera solution. A fantastic solution would be to use a single 1″ Sony sensor in future phones for portrait, wide, super wide and macro photography. One camera to rule them all, one camera to find them, One camera to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
