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The Meta (Facebook) smartwatch would have 3 photo sensors and a detachable rotating screen
Meta (Facebook) has filed a new patent for its smartwatch project. This reveals a watch whose screen is detachable and rotatable. This module includes a photo module. Rotating the screen allows you to change the photo sensor. Two models would be considered: one with a round screen and the other with a rectangular screen.
For a year now, rumors and leaks have been evoking a connected watch in development at Meta (Facebook). We have mentioned the subject several times in our columns. The first time in February 2021. It was then a question of an Android smartwatch (but not Wear OS) optimized for the group’s services (Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp). An exit in 2022 was already mentioned.
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In June, we reported that the watch could carry two cameras. A first for video calls and a second, detachable, for taking photos and videos like with a GoPro. Finally, last October, the day after the Facebook group’s name change to Meta, Bloomberg announced that the American firm would take inspiration from the Apple Watch to design the case for its watch.
Meta imagines a watch with more photo lenses whose screen is detachable and rotatable
This week, we learn that Meta’s smartwatch project could be much more ergonomically innovative. A patent was filed on June 24, 2021 by the firm with the global intellectual property management body, WIPO. The latter has validated and published the patent on January 13, 2022. A document of about fifty pages which reveals a watch whose screen is detachable. In the description, we can read that ” the invention relates to a portable device comprising a strap, a base (…), a removable attached display (…), and a camera integrated inside the display “.
The most amazing thing about this concept is obviously the detachable screen that can “rotate around the perimeter of the base in order to adjust the orientation of the camera”. If the first drawing (at the top of this article) reveals a rectangular model type Apple Watch with a single camera, the second drawing shows another model, with a circular screen like a Galaxy Watch, also seems to be envisioned with two or even three camera lenses. By rotating the screen, the user can change the lens in front of the sensor and thus change the viewing angle or use.
Meta’s watch would always be set for a launch in 2022. It remains to be seen what the firm will keep of its patents for this first generation and what it will reserve for the next one.
Source: WIPO