Mystery Samsung smartphone is packing a pop-up camera

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  Look at this beautiful, blemish-free display. [credit: @OnLeaks x @Pigtou_ ]

Would you believe that Samsung, of all companies, is working on a phone with a pop-up camera? OnLeaks has produced a render for the mystery phone you see above, which currently has no name. Seeing Samsung do this is kind of a surprise since the company's display division is a driving force behind all the hole-punch displays you see on smartphones.

With no name and no specs, it's hard to know what this phone is. It smells like a midranger, with the flat display, rear fingerprint reader, and a plain-looking rear camera setup that might be on the small side compared to the massive camera bricks that are in vogue right now. A good bet is that this slots in somewhere in the midrange "Galaxy A" lineup. Samsung isn't afraid to get experimental with the A series. This phone reminds one of the Galaxy A80, a phone with a pop-up swivel camera, where the back camera would rise out of the phone, flip around, and become the front camera.

We just saw one of the highest-profile pop-up camera phones, the OnePlus 7 Pro, dump the pop-up camera in the sequel, the OnePlus 8 Pro. Other companies that have produced pop-up camera phones, like Xiaomi, Asus, and OnePlus' sister company, Oppo, haven't kept the feature around in subsequent versions, either. Some outlets even called the OnePlus 8 the death of the pop-up camera. OnePlus said it dumped the pop-up camera for the usual reasons: removing the complicated mechanism means more battery space and less weight.

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