With the Mate 30 Pro, Huawei introduced a new round camera module, and it seems that the company has some big plans for what it can use the surrounding space for in future phones. According to a new patent spotted by Let"s Go Digital, that space is going to be used for a touch display.
For one thing, the display will be useful. You can see who"s calling, it can show the hands of a clock, it can light up for an alarm, and it can even show text messages. But it"s also meant to be a sort of touch wheel.
You can use it to zoom in and out with the camera, volume control, flip pages in books, and more.
The images in the patent show a quad-camera system, although that really shouldn"t indicate what you should expect from the device itself. This is a patent for a round touch display, not for the Mate 30 Pro itself. The cameras shown are really just a sample.
It"s also entirely possible that Huawei isn"t using this in the Mate 40 Pro at all. It could show up in the Mate 50 Pro the year after, or not at all. This is the nature of patents.