Smartphone companies are always looking for new ways to make their products stand out, and maximizing the screen real estate has been a trend in recent years. That involves reducing the space needed for the front-facing camera, with different approaches such as a notch, a punch-hole cutout, or motorized pop-up cameras letting displays push closer to the edges of the phone.
In recent months, though, companies such as OPPO have been working on ways to hide the camera under the display, but it looks like ZTE will be the first to make it happen. The company announced today that it will be revealing the Axon 20 5G next month in China, and it will be the world"s first smartphone with an under-display camera.
As we"ve seen in previous prototypes, the way these cameras work under the display is thanks to the ability to turn off individual pixels on an AMOLED display. By turning off the pixels that usually cover the camera area, the sensor can see through the screen, making it possible to see through the transparent layers. However, it"s been noted that camera quality can"t quite live up to regular cameras, so it"ll be interesting to see if ZTE managed to work around this.
There"s not much that"s known about the ZTE Axon 20 5G aside from the under-display camera, including whether it will be available anywhere outside of China. We"ll need to wait for the company to share more details in the future.