Chinese company Lens Technology has just patented a smartphone design with eight cameras and four flashes. The images show a phone with a standard all-screen front, but the back has two cameras and an LED flash positioned at an angle in each corner of the device. The back also appears to have a microphone for capturing sound for videos.

Cell phones with three and four cameras are commonplace today, and a device with five cameras was released last year. In 2018, even LG patented a cell phone design with 16 cameras. But LG's design placed all 16 sensors in a square in the upper corner of the phone's back, and the model only had one flash for all the cameras.

Lens Technology's phone, on the other hand, has one flash for every two cameras, and their positioning is quite unusual. It is not yet known whether the positioning of the eight cameras in the four corners of the smartphone has any advantage for taking photos, or if it is just an aesthetic touch. According to the Android Headlines website, it is possible that each camera module offers a different type of sensor, such as wide angle, telephoto lens, macro, and so on.

Lens Technology doesn't specialize in smartphones, so the phone may never get off the ground. The Changsha-based company is best known for supplying lenses and other components for phones and tablets. The screen on the Apple Watch, for example, is from Lens Technology. The company's founder, Zhou Qunfei, is even called the Queen of Cell Phone Glass in China.

Street: AndroidHeadlines