Samsung has been patenting some interesting technology – from foldable phones to a modular camera for phones. The patents also detail a phone with a dual-xenon flash (!).

The modular design shows several options – a regular looking camera, one with a camera bump that looks like it houses optical zoom and one with an exchangeable lens. The host phone is drawn in a couple of different shapes, suggesting the idea is to have a line of such devices that can pick and choose their camera.



Base camera module • dual xenon flash • optical zoom module * exchangeable lens module

Then there's this thing... it's thin like a phone, but has a big camera module and a thicker, a camera-like grip on one end, plus a hardware shutter key and a dial with another button.



A thin phone/camera hybrid

Now, patents are no guarantee that such a device will ever see the light of day, but they do give an insight into what Samsung's R&D department is working on.

Source 1 2 3 • Via (in Dutch)