In a race to increase display sizes and reduce bezel, Android manufacturers were trying all sorts of whacky things back in the day. Possibly the whackiest and unnecessarily complex engineering solution to be introduced was the pop-up selfie camera. Remember that thing?
Not every phone maker used this, but a very popular Android OEM did. OnePlus used it most notably on the OnePlus 7 Pro (photoed above), a relatively popular phone, which was really adored back in 2019.
The pop-up camera actually worked really well. Whenever you’d go to take a selfie or use apps like Snapchat, the camera would open right up and be ready for usage. It was snappy and kinda cute. One user even life hacked it and turned the pop-up camera into a beer opener. We salute this man.
Pop-up cameras didn’t last for very long, thanks to the introduction of under-display selfie cameras and selfie camera cutouts. We now have those on pretty much all major Android devices. God bless technology, amirite?
I’m sure someone here misses these days. Let’s hear in the comments how you want SD cards, headphone jacks, and pop-up selfie cameras to make a comeback.
