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| The One Plus Concept One |
Yes,
you heard it right. The Chinese giant in mobile industry unveiled their One
Plus Concept One at the CES2020. This is one of its kind and the first phone
which has rear cameras which are invisible.
The cameras are invisible only until the camera app is opened. Earlier Oppo had launched their under screen front camera phone in a later year, but this is the first of it's kind.
The design is inspired by one of the most elegant luxury sports car, McLaren 720S. McLaren being their partner for this concept, the phone features a glass roof panel that can alter its tint and control the amount of light allowed through.
Additionally, the One Plus Concept One design integrates both glass and leather, using the same stylish, premium quality leather specially tailored for McLaren’s own cars.
The body-
Concept One gets its color from its inspiration car. Just as the McLaren it has a beautifully toned papaya orange back. This is made by the finest quality of leather just as used in cars. The frame of the device is made up of PVD (physical vapor deposition) coated aluminum rather than an oxidized aluminum layer.
One Plus also added a thin layer of 24 karat gold to make the
frame shiny. But it’s not the most interesting part of this.
Invisible camera-
The rear triple camera with flash is always invisible when not in use, once the camera app is opened only then they are visible. Thanks to the electrochromic glass technology, inspired by the car's sunroof.
This technology is not new but is the first time used in smartphones. This will benefit a lot when it comes to the sleek and elegant design of the camera, as shortly when there are phones with 5-6 cameras. Where this will help hide the bulky rectangle of cameras or their irregular placements to get a more aesthetic design.
The the phone takes a mere 0.7s for the glass to transition from solid black to fully clear, faster even than the camera itself takes to fully activate, and it uses almost no power.
You can watch the teaser here
The technology-
A normal glass is made up of a single glass pane. If we see more sophisticated glasses they are made of two panes, with insulation between them. The electrochromic glass is made up of glass with two electrodes on both sides and liquid crystal ions sandwiched between them.
There are ions present to travel from one electrode to another. To understand the working of this glass we need to go back to school chemistry, the electrochemical cell. Whenever a current is applied to the two electrodes the ions in the solution move towards the opposite charge electrodes.
Similarly in electrochromic glass the opaqueness is adjusted by the flow of Lithium ions.
The observer is at leftAs we can see above, in the transmissive state the Li ions are on the left side, hence light is able to pass through the glass and it turns transparent. Whereas when we apply a reverse voltage the ions travel to the outer surface electrode reflecting all incoming light and making the glass opaque.
Once the ions travel the other side one may remove the current, the ions need no external energy once they are soaked on the other side. Once a reverse voltage is applied they travel back to the previous side electrode.
The future-
While this being one of the most advanced technology in tinting, this can be used in combination with a solar cell. Some amount of light falling on solar cells is reflected, using the darkened glass we can absorb the reflected light, of course, no window can be completely transparent or opaque, and the levels need to be adjusted.
Do comment if you can find any more future applications for this technology. You can find similar technologies here
One Plus Concept One -
- Electrochromic glass technology - https://www.explainthatstuff.com/electrochromic-windows.html
