The OnePlus 7 Pro is out, and it has something interesting up its sleeve….namely the selfie camera. It’s a pop-up, and it works exactly as it sounds. The camera sits as a separate component inside the body of the new OnePlus 7 Pro, and it pops out mechanically when you need it.
This is the first time there’s been a pop-up camera in a phone sold in the U.S., though it’s not a new feature thanks to companies like Vivo. OnePlus says it put the pop-up mechanism through a hefty 300,000 cycle tests, which means it should last up to five years before potentially showing signs of wear on the OnePlus 7 Pro. That’s even if you use the camera 150 times per day.
The camera is also very sturdy. It has built-in sensors in the phone, which detects when the camera is falling, and they quickly force the camera to retract into the body. It retracts so quickly you’ll hardly notice.
Aside from popping up, it has 16 megapixels packed in, which is higher than usual for most selfie cameras, but it has an aperture of f/2.0. That means it should deliver detailed selfies, though quality may look a little muddy in low light. It also offers electronic image stabilization and can capture video at up to 1,080p at 30 frames per second.
Lastly, the mechanical camera can be used for Face Unlock, and it’s pretty quick. The camera is able to rise from the phone’s body in a minuscule 0.53 seconds, meaning that you won’t have to wait long at all to unlock your phone. Unfortunately, this still isn’t a secure unlocking option, so you can only use it to unlock the lock screen, and not for accessing a secure service, like your banking app.
The OnePlus 7 Pro may be the first phone with a mechanical pop-up camera in the U.S., but expect more phones to come with the feature in the near future.
