Goodbye notch & co: the front camera moves under the display

Jan Johannsen

3.6.2019

Translation: machine translated

Notch, Hole Punch or Inifinty-O: no matter what manufacturers call their smartphone displays with holes, their time is over. In future, the front camera will move under the touchscreen.

Admit it: you never really liked the cut-outs or holes in the screens. They were always more of a necessary evil to minimise the edge around the display. However, there is unlikely to have been a designer or engineer at a smartphone manufacturer who thought they were great - even if they always claimed otherwise on the keynote stages.

In October 2018, the OnePlus 6T was the first smartphone with a fingerprint sensor under the display that I got my hands on. When it was explained to me that there is a camera under the screen that scans the finger, I asked myself: "How long will it be before the first manufacturers build the front camera under the display?"

The front camera you can't see

The time has now come in June 2019. Within one day, two smartphone manufacturers from China, Oppo and Xiaomi, have unveiled new devices in which the front camera cannot be seen under the display. However, you can still take selfies with the mobiles. However, these are not yet finished devices, but prototypes that show what will soon be possible.

Oppo kicked things off on its Twitter account. You can see the top half of a smartphone without a camera. On the display, however, you can see that a camera is switched on. When a finger then moves across the touchscreen, it becomes clear that the camera is under the screen.

After the tweet from Oppo, Xiaomi doesn't seem to want to be left behind and also published a video. At the beginning you can see two smartphones - one with and one without a notch. The one with the notch is then placed to one side and a woman takes a selfie with the other - without a visible front camera.

Xiaomi promises a "sneak peek at the future", i.e. a brief preview of the future. However, neither manufacturer has yet revealed how the new technology will work. There are also no concrete announcements as to when the first smartphones with a selfie camera under the display will be ready and available for purchase. The new OnePlus 7 Pro, on the other hand, already looks old-fashioned with its retractable camera.

Looks nice, but problems cannot be ruled out

Optically, a smartphone without a visible front camera looks very smart. However, I can think of three things that could spoil the joy of selfies. It is unclear how much light falls through the screen onto the lens. It is likely to be less than with a classic front camera - and in simple terms, the more light that falls on the lens, the better the image quality.

It is also still questionable whether the light and, above all, the colour of the display will reflect on the camera and how much fingerprints and other dirt on the touchscreen will affect the image quality of the selfies. We will only find out all this when the smartphones are ready. Forecast: In China, the first models will be launched on the market in 2019, and in 2020 it could be the new trend for all manufacturers.

Jan Johannsen

Editor

Jan.Johannsen@galaxus.de

When I was but a young student, I'd sit in my friend's living room with all my classmates and play on his SuperNES. Since then I've had the opportunity to test out all the newest technology for you. I've done reviews at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, and have now arrived at Galaxus.de. more