On November 18 Patently Apple posted a report titled "Chinese Smartphone Vendor Oppo Surprised the Market in their Keynote Event by Introducing a Scrollable Smartphone for 2021." The report provided videos and general information about the coming Oppo X 2021 that could spark some interest with smartphone enthusiasts wanting a smartphone with an easily expandable display with the push of a button.

Clearly Chinese smartphone vendor Oppo wants to expand their presence in China and Europe by grabbing market share away from Huawei who sold off their 'Honor' smartphone brand recently that's bound to further weaken Huawei's market share globally.

They also want to take a run at Apple through new form factors and to try and break the camera upgrade cycle that drives iPhone sales annually.

Beyond the Oppo X 2021 scrollable form factor smartphone, a new Oppo patent application has come to light with  an oddball idea that just might be of interest to some: Upgradable camera modules.

While Google dreamt up the concept of a smartphone that consumers could ultimately create using a base phone that could accept magnetic add-on modules for the backside under Project Ara, Oppo want's to keep it simple for now by focusing only on upgradable camera modules where consumer interest is the hightest. 

This is the one feature that is rapidly changing and smartphone owners may wish to pay for a camera upgrade instead of an entirely new phone every year to obtain the best camera.

Oppo's patent figures below illustrate their basic concept of an upgradable camera module with figure 5 illustrating an enlargement of the pluggable module.  

Oppo's patent filing states that "The camera module #500 includes the lens cartridge #520, the flexible circuit board #530 (FPC, Flexible Printed Circuit board) and the first connection end #540, the lens tube #520 and the first connection end #540 are connected to both ends of the flexible circuit board and the first connecting end is connected to the motherboard 300 to enable the camera module 500 to communicate with the motherboard.

If you're interested in digging into the details and  view more patent figures, review Oppo's World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) patent WO2020238122 here.

One could imagine trading in an iPhone Pro camera module for an iPhone Pro MAX camera module for say $249 (installed by a Genius Bar rep) 12-18 months after buying the Pro model. Would that interest Apple fans? Well, instead of a buying a completely new iPhone to get a hold of the latest camera, why not just upgrade to the latest camera? The idea has been on other Apple fan minds this year.  

For that reason, we can only hope that Oppo's concept is seriously on their roadmap and becomes successful. Unless it's a threat to the iPhone in China, Apple won't be considering this idea eating into new iPhone sales anytime soon.