With phones like him MiMix Alpha and it’s mysterious triple prototypeXiaomi is no stranger to dreaming of distant conceptual devices. But in a recently discovered patent, Xiaomi may have come up with a new smartphone idea that is best left on paper.
In a recent patent filed with the international design system in The Hague (which is part of the World Intellectual Property Office), Xiaomi describes a phone that comes with foldable earphones designed for storage. inside The phone when not in use. No additional charging case is required.
Theoretically, the idea makes a lot of sense, because with so many people swapping wireless headphones like Apple’s AirPods or Samsung’s Galaxy Buds, being able to store the headphones inside your phone would mean you can leave the headset charging case at home. . And when the headphones run out, you can simply put them back on the phone to recharge by removing the much larger battery from your phone.
But what really brings the idea to life is a set of product renderings based on Xiaomi’s patent filing created by the Dutch tech website. LetsGoDigital That shows what the Xiaomi concept would look like in the real world. According to the patent, the key trick for the earphones to fit inside a phone without becoming a clumsy nuisance is the use of a small hinge that allows the earphone earpiece to rotate depending on the situation.
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When used as earphones, the earphone headphone can be rotated and adjusted so that they can sit properly on your ears, and when you need to store or recharge them, the earphone could be straightened so that when fully inserted into the phone, the earphone would fit flush with the side of the phone. It’s a pretty smart idea, though right away, there are some obvious flaws with this design.
The first problem is that the headphones shaped like the ones seen in the LetsGoDigital rendering don’t look very comfortable, and adding the type of padding or headphones that would improve the fit quickly would make it much more difficult for the headphones to disappear entirely. inside the body of a smartphone when not in use.
But perhaps the biggest problem is simply the amount of space it would take to create headphone room. In recent years, smartphone manufacturers have routinely blamed the 3.5mm jack for taking up too much space and the reason why many new phones ship with a single port (usually USB-C or lighting), which then It has to accommodate a variety of functions including charging, data transfer, and wired audio.
But in Xiaomi’s patent, Xiaomi would have to forge two separate slots to hold the left and right earbuds, and both earbuds are likely to take up considerably more space than a headphone jack. So in order to have enough space inside the headphone phone along with typical smartphone components like a processor, multiple cameras, a battery and more, the phone would probably end up being huge. Think Galaxy Note 10+ size or even bigger.
Also, buying a phone that comes with a pair of built-in wireless headphones could be a deciding factor rather than a selling point, as people can be quite picky about their headphones. For many people, in-ear headphones simply don’t fit properly or are more likely to fall off, and being forced to pay for headphones they may not want or want might be a problem.
There’s also the problem of what to do if someone loses one of the headphones. Wireless headphone manufacturers generally don’t sell individual replacement headsets, so replacing a headphone in case it gets lost could be a hassle.
So while I appreciate Xiomi’s desire to create a phone that gives people one less thing to go, it will probably require a little more refinement to turn their patent into something that people really want to buy.
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