The design of any product is strongly influenced by the fashions and obsessions of the industry, and if we talk about mobile phones, there is one that has been in the limelight for years: the full-screen front. OLED panels have helped reduce bezels, but the front camera is still a current hurdle. There are those who solve it with a hole, there are those who solve it with a notch that turns into a dynamic island, and there are those who play with a different trick: integrating the selfie camera into a motorized part.

Adding a part with a mechanism a priori doesn’t sound like much in terms of usefulness and durability over time, but if the mechanism is sturdy enough not to shorten its standard lifespan and has a reason to exist, why Negative. Let them tell this to those who endure who seem to stay here. Motorized camera phones did not suffer the same fate.the heroes of this article are not all who are here, but all who are.

The person who risks going against the tide of fashion has two possible goals: to become a pioneer in setting the trend, or to discover that for one reason or another the idea did not work out so well. I must say I know people who have a mobile phone with a motorized front camera and there it is, the mobile phone and the selfie bump are both fine. What’s no longer available are the pop-up cameras themselvesWe can limit its explosion (to say the least) to the time period from 2018 to 2020.

One goal: infinite screen

Be careful, they didn’t start in 2018 because they had previously launched the Honor 7i and Huawei Shot X (same model but launched in different markets) when Honor and Huawei were grouped under the same holding. OPPO and other brands such as OPPO N1 and N3 with rotating cameras have also taken note of this path. But let’s go back to 2018, specifically MWC 2018, the fair where we learned about the Vivo Apex concept. Activate the front camera in 0.8 seconds to get 98% screen.

We went from a concept to a reality sold in Europe: in the analysis of OPPO Find Xataka module appeared as one of the counter argumentsa section where it fell short of expectations due to the offering making it a slower experience for both unlocking and photography due to a lack of practicality.

Xiaomi has also embarked on the pop-up camera adventure with the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, another high-end product with a sliding body that disperses the camera to avoid notches, holes or other devices, thus resulting in an impressive terminal to look at. Unfortunately, it did not convince us on a functional level due to its slippery glass surfaces and slow installation time. cataloging as ‘semi-defined’.

Vivo Nex

Vivo had already shown that it was interested in the Vivo Apex concept, so months later it implemented it with the Vivo Nex to get an 86-inch display with an in-display fingerprint reader and a front camera inside the minimal retractable mechanism. % of surface cleaned. However, in our experience It was more ostentatious than functional..

The mechanism is debugged and initialized democratize

We’ve seen Xiaomi try the adventure with one of its higher series, but others like OnePlus threw all the meat on the grill with the OnePlus 7 Pro in 2019, where a certain improvement was seen in the retractable module for the selfie camera. What was there before, but there is still the obstacle It requires a second to power on to take a photo or face unlock. At the end of the same year It was repeated with the OnePlus 7T Pro in an ongoing bet.

So far we have found full-width motorized modules with minimal parts, as you can see in the photos, but in the summer of 2019 a shark fin entered the scene with the mid-range OPPO Reno with a premium design. An improved mechanism compared to Find In summary: The mechanism of motorized cameras is getting better.

We have already mentioned relatively modern Chinese brands on the old continent, but the popularity of the motorized camera mechanism knows no bounds, and Samsung is investing in a mid-range model in this regard: Samsung Galaxy A80. And it does it its own way: It moves away from periscopic front cameras to install a reversible and unstable triple camera. The idea was striking and attractive, as it saves on sensors and at the same time makes it possible to use the rear cameras for selfies, but the implementation did not convince us. In one sentence: ‘What a great feeling with an almost infinite screen, but how impractical the module is‘. Samsung must have thought the same because not once again.

Samsung Galaxy A80

Throughout 2019, more mid-range products emerged with some kind of mechanism such as Realme Google services; OPPO Reno 2, OPPO Reno2 F and OPPO Reno2 Z with shark fin and pop-up mechanisms. Closing the year is the Motorola One Hyper, a mid-range product from another brand, which is quite generous with its software, screen size or fast charging for less than 300 euros it joins other entities like a battery.

At an a priori promising moment when they continue to penetrate different segments and ranges and no longer appear as an obstacle in analysis, motorized cameras shut down forever. The year of COVID-19 was also a year of farewell; It was a turbulent period in every sense, when everything, including launches, stopped or slowed down irreparably. In this scenario, they were no longer available in higher ranges like the OnePlus 8 Pro as well as brands that invested heavily in them like Vivo or OPPO.

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