Xiaomi Mi Mix is a flagship phone with an incredible liquid camera

(Image credit: Xiaomi)

It looks increasingly probable that Xiaomi volition launch a revolutionary new blazon of lens in a smartphone before long. A affiche with an enigmatic water design has appeared on Twitter showing what could be an exciting liquid-based lens in the new Xiaomi Mi Mix.

The post, which comes from Ben Geskin, quotes Lei Hun, co-founder of Xiaomi, and describes a lens which is both telephoto and macro at the same fourth dimension. He claims that the main is the same as the man eye, which uses muscles to change the shape of your lenses, allowing you to focus very quickly.

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The only slight confusion hither is that claim of both macro and telephoto in the same lens. This might be a slight error, because an optical zoom would be many times more complicated than a simple fixed focal length. However, the thought of focusing at infinity, so back down to a macro scale is certainly heady even if there's no zoom involved.

Xiaomi Mi MIX volition use Liquid Lens for the first time ever 🙌It's changing focal length and focus making information technology both telephoto and macro lens 🤯 motion picture.twitter.com/tKgtirbmqhMarch 25, 2021

It's quite possible Xiaomi has indeed developed something which can also arrange the focal length, likewise, which would allow for a lens like this to zoom. Information technology's difficult to imagine this maintaining the quality of an optical lens, merely perhaps at that place's a surprise alee of the states.

The idea of a water lens isn't actually new, and the technology is used in manufacturing already. You may know Corning from Gorilla Glass, which protects your phone drinking glass from scratches or breakage, but the visitor also has a range of lenses that employ technology like to this already.

In these lenses h2o and oil are used. Considering they won't mix, when they're trapped together the surface they create can be used as a lens. That surface can exist expanded or contracted with an electric current and used to focus an image incredibly apace. You can run into the result of that in the video beneath.

The big reward of these lenses is that they are not mechanical. That ways they don't clothing out and can be used in places when a mechanical organisation might malfunction. That's non necessarily a big trouble in a smartphone, simply the simplicity of the system and the speed at which it can operate might make for a more than responsive camera.

The Xiaomi Mi Mix will launch March 29.

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Ian has been involved in technology journalism since 2007, originally writing about AV hardware back when LCDs and plasma TVs were just gaining popularity. Near 15 years on, he remains as excited as always about how tech can make your life better. Ian is the editor of T3.com only has also regularly contributed to Tom'south Guide.