Massive patent leak suggests Insta360 is planning to take out DJI's dominant Osmo Pocket 3 vlogging camera

If true, this unverified leak could be brilliant news for the vlogging community – a serious competitor for the DJI Pocket 3 camera at the same time that DJI is facing trouble releasing new products in the USA. The patent images look genuine, but the source has gone further than that, generating final images for a bit more attention. Here we'll deal with the facts...

I've been reviewing the new Insta360 Link 2 Pro camera this weekend, so I'm more than aware of the company's capabilities when it comes to gimbal-based cameras, and it has already occoured to me (and a lot of other photographers and video makers) that it would make a lot of sense to see something like this come from Insta360 when, scrolling down my tweets – I mean 'X' – I saw the above post.

Now the problem is that, while it's easy enough to find a leaked patent and diagrams, all that really tells us is that someone at Insta360 also had the idea – not that a product is on the way, or that it is definitely coming, or when. All of that is what we'd really like to know.

The writer at The New Camera claims to have conducted more research, hence the discovery of the patents (filed in China, which makes sense) and a modular design. This, again, seems very likely (DJI opted for a modular design if you count the expandable battery – adding a removable gimbal head doesn't seem to be much more taxing.

The next question is just how reliable the source is, and, historically, we've not had a lot of information from them which has panned out, but there are certainly a lot of interesting posts.

The other thing I'd say is interesting is that more reliable DJI rumor souces have NOT mentioned this story yet...

Self-styled 'tech detective' Igor Bogdanov is sharing pictures of a pair of upcoming DJI Osmo Pocket 4 cameras, apparently, but I might have expected him to mention a big competitor if he thought it was serious or imminent.

That's not to say it's not coming – in fact I very definitely think it'd be mad NOT to take on this product category given the tech available to Insta360. I just don't think we've learned that much of interest just yet.