Essential Patents Popout Camera Smartphone, Sorry Vivo...

Andy Rubin's Essential patents popout camera Essential Phone, when tweeted with a link to the Vivo Apex, Rubin not only mentions that he had in fact already seen the phone, but fired back with a patent (US9736383B2) he and his company had already filed for almost the same exact thing. It was granted back in 2017 maybe we’ll likely never see the Vivo Apex exist outside of a concept device. 

The patent description is as follows:

"The technology disclosed here maximizes the size of the display area associated with the mobile device by various camera placement. In one embodiment, the camera is placed inside the mobile device, and can pop outside the mobile device when the camera is activated. When the camera is inactive the camera retracts inside the mobile device, and becomes unnoticeable to the user. In another embodiment, the camera is integrated into the mobile device display as a camera icon. The integrated camera serves two purposes: to record pictures, and to act as a camera icon, that when selected activates the camera. By removing the camera from the front side of the mobile device, or by integrating the camera into the display screen of the mobile device, the size of the mobile device display screen can be increased."


Source: Andy Rubin on Twitter, US patent