- The Chinese smartphone brand is speaking for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show, which takes place this year from January 7 to 10 in Las Vegas.
- OnePlus unveils its Concept One, a high-end smartphone whose particularity is to be equipped with invisible cameras.
- Covered with an electrochromic glass which can change color, the sensors are only revealed when activating the shooting on the smartphone.
One, two, three, four? * How many photo modules does the OnePlus Concept One smartphone unveiled at the electronics show Consumer Electronics Show have? Impossible to say: they are invisible to the eye!
Shortly before the CES which takes place from January 7 to 10, the Chinese brand had lifted a corner of the veil on its twitter account about its "invisible camera". Without saying more. Confirmation now with the Concept One that OnePlus unveils in Las Vegas. The device is co-developed with the car manufacturer McLaren, already a partner of OnePlus for certain limited editions of its smartphones, such as the OnePlus 7T Pro.
Electrochromic glass is his secret
In its luxurious orange leather case with stitching, the rear of the Concept One reveals only a thin black throat from the glass shell of the smartphone. Abracadabra: when you activate the shooting function, the glass clears up and reveals the photo modules of the smartphone, hidden under the shell.
His secret? Electrochromic glass! Also called smart glass or dynamic glass, the material changes color when a weak electric current passes through it. This is not new: we already find it in the building world, with windows that can thus be opacified to filter the light. There are also some at MacLaren. The British car manufacturer has adopted the principle for the roof panel of its 720S racing car. Its color can thus be modified to control the reflection of light.
0.7 seconds to reveal itself
The challenge for OnePlus, however, was to make this glass exceptionally thin, without being fragile. The manufacturer thus refers to two glass panels of 0.1 mm each and a "combined total of 5 layers measuring 0.35 mm thick". This surface overcomes the different lenses and the LED flash with which the Concept One is fitted. It becomes translucent when the photo / video application of the smartphone is opened, a manipulation which has the effect of sending an electrical flow to the protective glass.
According to OnePlus, it takes only 0.7 seconds for the glass of its Concept One to go from black to translucent, which would give the smartphone a very high level of responsiveness. In addition to the indisputable aesthetic advantage, the manufacturer advances the possibility of "taking sharper and more detailed photos in strong light. Arguments impossible to verify. And which will undoubtedly remain so: the OnePlus Concept One is, as the name suggests, a concept, that is to say, a line of thought. Thus, the smartphone is not intended to be marketed.
Mission: buzz
Remains that aesthetically, the "disappearance" of the photo modules at the back of the Concept One is a complete success. We are far from the often unsightly appendages with three or four lenses, such as the iPhone 11 Pro, the Motorola One Zoom or the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro. Not sure, however, that the future is in hulls with electrochromic glass. In the meantime OnePlus has won its bet: to make the buzz in the aisles of the largest electronics fair in the world and show its ability to innovate.
* So have you find it ? There is three. These are those of the OnePlus 7T Pro: 48 megapixels (f / 1.6) + 16 megapixels ultra-wide angle 117 ° (f / 2.2) + 8 megapixels 3x optical zoom of 78 mm.
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- CES 2020
- OnePlus
- High-Tech
- smartphone