Meizu patented a circular quad camera

  Meizu MY+
Meizu patented a circular quad camera

Meizu’s new 17th series will apparently have four circular sensors on the rear camera. This is evident from the approved applications CN305568957S and CN305568958S published on January 21, 2020 on the website of the Chinese Patent Office CNIPA. China National Intellectual Property Administration is the new name of the department after the restructuring of the old SIPO (State Intellectual Property Office of China).

We see the involvement of designer Wang Dongwei and Huang Zhang himself (full name Huang Xiuzhang) in the development of both patents. Huang Zhang is widely recognized in industrial design, so surely live cameras will look much more beautiful than in the drawings.

So far, three is the largest number of sensors in the company’s cameras (Meizu 16Xs, Meizu 16s Pro, Meizu M10 and Meizu 16T), so for the first time we will have a Meizu smartphone with a quad camera.

There are two patents. In the first type we have five holes, which will most likely be for the four sensors at the ends and a flash located in the middle.

Meizu CN305568957S
Meizu CN305568957S

The second patent has only four openings, one of which shows that it is for a ring flash (two concentric circles). Here, the fourth sensor will most likely be located inside the flash. It is unlikely that there will be three sensors plus a flash, because then it would be better to be located in a straight line, as in the Meizu 16s Pro.

Meizu CN305568958S
Meizu CN305568958S

The ring LED flash was first introduced in the Meizu PRO 6 announced in April 2016, and is installed only on higher-end models. So we can assume that it will be installed in flagship phones like Meizu 17, which will be the first in the world to be equipped with the top Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G chipset.

Meizu PRO 6 / Meizu 16s Pro
Meizu PRO 6 / Meizu 16s Pro

For the first design we can assume that it will be used in medium-budget phones from the 17 series, and why not from the Note series. Although the company has officially announced a contraction of the product line and an emphasis on flagship models, we hope to see Meizu Note10 this year.