The Redmi K20 is now touted as the lightest pop-up camera flagship around

Redmi's 2019 flagship has been in the works for a while. Despite having been known as a cost-effective product name of Xiaomi's for years, this name has recently been re-invented as a brand that can produce competitive smartphone in its own right.

To this end, the Snapdragon 855-powered K20 may be released soon. Its leaks and subsequent official teasers have led to a wave of speculation about the phone, including that it might incorporate a pop-up selfie camera. However, the brand's general manager, Lu Weibing, once shut down queries to this effect.

It is not clear why Lu was so dead against pop-up modules initially. However, the manager has recently returned to Weibo with more insight on the subject. He pointed out that phones with this feature tend to be heavy - they have "an average weight of 200 grams - and some even 211 grams". (Lu is not wrong: the latest 'pop-up flagship', the OnePlus 7 Pro, comes in at 206.)

However, Lu also asserts that Redmi's engineers have optimized the K20's design in such a way that it is "still very light in [the] hand". This, then, may be why a pop-up selfie-cam has been approved for this phone after all. The Redmi manager also now claims that the component is rated for over 300,000 deployments, and would last even if it were used for 100 selfies per day for over 8 years.