The Huawei Mate 40 series is rumored for a launch sometime around October, but we’ve already seen a lot of details and speculation on the upcoming flagship. Most notably, we’ve been told by accurate leaker and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo to expect groundbreaking camera tech and a crazy fast chipset.Now, a new Huawei patent has surfaced, and thanks to LetsGoDigital we can speculate that the technology that was patented inside will be used on the Huawei Mate 40.

As we’ve noticed over the recent months, Huawei’s patents have shown smartphones that no longer feature physical buttons in favor of touch controls and gestures, and what we see here is no exception. The new patent for “Side Touch Camera Interface” shows how Huawei wants to utilize the curved display of the Mate 40 – by adding camera controls on the phone’s top side, when used in landscape with the Camera app.

Side-touch controls for the Camera app appear to include zooming, flash, HDR on/off, photo filters, and of course, a shutter. This makes the entire front of the screen free for showing what is being captured, with no interface obstructions at all. Speaking of capturing footage and photos, the Mate 40 is expected to pack at least four cameras on the rear, with free-form lenses for improved ultra-wide-angle shots and a dedicated periscope camera.

An interesting oddity in this Huawei patent is that the back of the phone shown inside doesn’t seem to feature any cameras. Other Huawei patents always do, so we can either assume that this patent is solely for the side-touch interface, or Huawei is indeed also planning on making the back cameras invisible, similarly to what we saw on the OnePlus Concept One.

In any case, Huawei certainly knows how to make attractive phones, and the Huawei Mate 40 is likely to be a hit, especially with mobile photography enthusiasts. Sadly, the company was recently banned from selling in the US for yet another year.