Item: Sony receives patent for popup stereo speakers
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Author: Vyncent Chan

Sony receives patent for popup stereo speakers

Sony’s smartphones still sport visible bezels until today, and that’s partly due to Sony’s insistence on having stereo front facing speakers. While Xiaomi has proven that it’s possible to cram stereo speakers into a sleek, bezel-less device with the Xiaomi Mi 10 series, Sony may have come up with a more novel way to bring high quality audio to smartphones: popup speakers.

The patent for the rather unique design was filed in 2018, before being approved on 14th May. The patent includes a popup selfie camera on the upper mechanism, while the one over on the bottom is called a pop-down speaker which allows Sony to continue the symmetry that Sony has defined in its OmniBalance design language.

Both ends of the phone will feature a motorized system and can be activated independently depending on usage. The patent also explains that Sony will be integrating antennae into the moving bits, but I don’t exactly see the reason behind it. Then again, there isn’t much reason for such a complicated design even if you want chart-topping stereo speakers and no bezels.

With that said, such a design definitely looks refreshing. A bezel-less Sony Xperia smartphone might be a good idea considering that Sony’s continued use of 21:9 displays result in very long smartphones, especially when you consider that they currently feature significant bezels on both ends of the display.

Sony might have a difficult time to market such a device though. Sony pioneered water resistant smartphones with the Sony Xperia Z, so forgoing an IP rating for a cool popup mechanism might not sit well with Sony’s fans.

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Pokdepinion: Practicality wise, this design doesn’t make that much sense, but hey, it looks set to be pretty cool. Also I wonder if the alarm will be loud enough if you went to sleep and forgot to popup the speakers.