Chinese smartphone manufacturer Mito has reportedly developed a drone that cuts costs significantly less than an all-in-one device for those wanting to master aerial photography.
Instead of creating a flying robot with an HD or expensive camera component, the Mito drones uses your smartphone camera to take high-quality snaps instead.
The smartphone slips into the centre of the drone’s frame and can fly just like any other available on the market, as a fraction of the cost. Obviously, the problem with this method of taking photos rather than having a built-in camera is that if your drone crash lands, so does your smartphone, potentially rendering everything useless and unrecoverable.
MobileScout added that there will be no internal driver at all attached to the drone meaning you’ll presumably have to map out your route before takeoff, allowing it to ride into the sunset without really knowing if it’ll return back to you safely or not. Alternatively, you could probably use another connected device to control it, but that would rely on your having a secondary smartphone or tablet to hand.
Leaked pictures of the drone show it has four propellers to help it fly, with space for the smartphone to sit in the centre. This central part of the frame swivels to secure the smartphone while the drone is flying around and to get different views of the world from above ground.
No other details of Mito’s drone have been released, so we don’t even know whether it will have its own battery, what its maximum height will be, distance it can fly or even whether it’s a genuine product.
However, it may inspire some smartphone manufacturers or other drone-makers to consider making a similar design in order to cut the mechanical parts of drones on the market.
