OnePlus is gearing up to announce the “OnePlus Concept One” during the CES 2020 next week at Wynn Luxury Resort, Las Vegas. The Concept One was first hinted by the company when they shared a small teaser video on their official social media handles. Recently, the company shared another short video about the smartphone. The video also breaks the news about some “groundbreaking invisible camera” and “color-shifting glass technology” that will be present in the smartphone.
We’re bringing the #OnePlusConceptOne to #CES2020, but you don’t have to wait: you can get a sneak peek at it right here, along with its groundbreaking “invisible camera” and color-shifting glass technology. pic.twitter.com/elsV9DKctn
— OnePlus (@oneplus) January 3, 2020
More recently appeared some rough sketches of the Concept One smartphone, which were shared by WIRED. These sketches show the design of the smartphone along with its “invisible camera” part.
The WIRED also revealed that the phone uses the same electrochromic glass technology which is used for making the sunroof of some McLaren supercars and Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. The glass uses some electricity to change its tint from opaque to transparent. When you open the camera app, some electricity is applied to the glass and it becomes transparent. You can then see the cameras and use them to capture images. Upon closing the camera app, the electricity being supplied to the glass is stopped which makes it back opaque again. OnePlus says the tint of the glass changes within a second unlike as on the Boeing aircraft, where it can take several seconds.
Many people have been skeptical about this technology, wondering about the need of hiding the cameras. Pete Lau, Founder and CEO of OnePlus says, “A core tenet of this philosophy is having a focus on purposeful design … a total uninterrupted screen experience”.
The phone has been designed in collaboration with McLaren, like the “OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren Edition” launched recently. The Concept One smartphone has some papaya-orange colored leather stitched on the back with some glass present in between. It borrows the same camera setup from the OnePlus 7T Pro, consisting of a 48 MP primary sensor, 16 MP ultrawide lens, and an 8 MP telephoto lens.
The phone will be in a concept phase now and won’t be released anytime soon as the production costs aren’t low. OnePlus will probably launch the smartphone when this technology becomes affordable and other manufacturers also start utilizing it. Until then, there are a few challenges they can overcome, like, the replacement of the glass is not easy in case it gets broken.
The phone will be revealed on January 7 and will be put on display at CES 2020, in the Palmer 2 booth at Wynn Luxury Resort, from 7-10 January.
