All the teasers that said the world’s first phone with a selfie camera under the screen would be unveiled this week were right. Oppo demoed at MWC 2019 Shanghai the technology that will make possible the all-screen design we all want, and said the first commercial products to pack under-screen selfie cameras are coming soon.
Ever since Apple launched the iPhone X launched, smartphone vendors raced each other to copy the notch. Then they came up with other design compromises to increase the size of the screen without completely removing the selfie camera. Oppo is one of the companies that tried both notch designs and pop-up selfie cameras or slider phones. But many of these vendors have also been working on placing the camera under the screen, with Oppo being comfortable with its progress to actually show off a prototype.
OPPO's brand new solution for full-screen display – Under-screen Camera (USC) has just been unveiled here at #MWC19 Shanghai! #MoreThanTheSeen pic.twitter.com/k5qEQ3QNta
— OPPO India (@OPPOIndia) June 26, 2019
To pull it off, Oppo used a custom transparent display material that features a redesigned pixel structure, The Verge explains. That’s enough to allow light to reach the camera sensor, which is what needs to happen for it to be able to snap pictures. The sensor itself is bigger than other selfie cameras and features a wider aperture.
The transparent screen region displays images and supports touch interaction, so it works just like a screen.
The following video from YouTube channel Sparrow News shows the Oppo prototype in action, complete with camera samples. The under-screen camera is nearly invisible, but you might notice it in some cases, depending on what’s shown on the display.
Oppo has perfected algorithms that are supposed to deal with quality issues resulting from the fact that the selfie camera is placed under a display.
Oppo says the photos are “on par with mainstream devices,” but the first samples suggest there’s still work to be done, and that’s probably why Oppo doesn’t have a launch date estimate better than “near future” for phones with under-screen cameras.
Oppo has unveiled other mobile innovations in the past, well before making them available to the public, including the VOOC fast-charging batteries, and the periscope cameras that support improved zoom.
Xiaomi a few weeks ago also teased that it’s working on its own under-screen camera tech, but made no official announcements.
