The pop-up selfie camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro looks like it's begging to break after a drop, but the smartphone a clever trick to prevent that

OnePlus says it takes 0.53 seconds — about half a second — for the camera to raise and lower itself. It raises quickly enough for when you want take a selfie, at least for me.

The only way to find out was with a quick test where I dropped the phone from a height of about 4 and a half feet and captured the drop with a slow-motion camera. Thankfully I had the Galaxy S10, which has a great slow-motion camera mode.

Check out the test below. I'd advise to expand the GIF to a full size video, and tap the "SD" button on the bottom-right to change it to HD for a better view of the pop-up selfie camera retracting as it falls:

It's a little hard to tell, but the pop-up selfie camera doesn't quite fully retract into its enclosure before the phone hits the ground. You can tell the pop-up selfie camera is still in the process of retracting by the sliver of light reflecting off the selfie camera when the phone hits the blanket.

Still, it might just retract enough to prevent the selfie camera from breaking off, even if it hits the ground at an angle that would prove fatal to the pop-up selfie camera if it hadn't retracted at all.

It's also more likely that the pop-up selfie camera would fully retract if it was dropped from a higher heigh, like face-height where you'd take a selfie from. That, of course, depends on how tall you are.

A case might also let the OnePlus 7 Pro's pop-up selfie camera survive a drop around the selfie camera's enclosure.

via Gfycat

When I manually pressed down on the selfie camera only using as much pressure that was needed for the camera to retract, the OnePlus 7 Pro shows me a notification saying "To protect the front camera, please avoid pressing it manually." Who knows how the pop-up selfie camera would react if it received a sudden shock from a direct impact onto a hard surface.

The pop-up selfie camera afforded the company the ability to deliver a totally notch- and cutout-free display on the OnePlus 7 Pro. As a result, the OnePlus 7 Pro's display is objectively unmatched by screens on Apple's iPhones or Samsung Galaxy S10 series, especially when you consider how smoothly the screen works when you swipe around the Android operating system and apps.

Still, the pop-up selfie camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro adds an element of risk that you're going to have to gauge for yourself. It's good to know that OnePlus has a repair service where you can ship off your phone to get the pop-up selfie camera repaired.