Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Forget the iPhone 11 and Pixel 4, the smartphone display we want is coming next week

Published Jun 20th, 2019 7:31AM EDT
Oppo Under-Display Camera
Image: Hasan Kaymak

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

The second half of the year will bring us a bunch of exciting high-end smartphones, including the Galaxy Note 10, iPhone 11, Pixel 4, Huawei Mate 30 Pro, and OnePlus 7T. We already have an idea of how some of them will look, especially the first three in the list thanks to a large number of leaks, and it’s unlikely that any of them will deliver the smartphone design we all want. However, that no-compromise screen tech will be unveiled as soon as next week by a smartphone maker from China.

Oppo posted on social media a clip that showed a smartphone featuring a selfie camera behind the screen. That’s the holy grail of smartphone design right now, as it would allow smartphone makers to dump all selfie cam-related compromises. Whether they’re notches, hole-punch cameras or pop-up/slide-up cameras, they’re all compromises between gorgeous all-screen design and camera functionality. We want the screen to be as big as possible, but we’re not ready to dump the selfie cam from these phones. Here’s what Oppo’s tech looked like:

According to CNMO, a blogger received the following invitation from Oppo, which notes a June 26th date for the even, at the MWC 2019 Shanghai event.

Image source: Oppo via CNMO

The teaser image features a halo ring around what’s probably the selfie camera of a smartphone — notice the speaker at the top. The same animation can be seen when the under-screen selfie camera is used in the video above.

The company came up with several smartphone innovations in the past years, including fast-charge battery tech as well as periscope cameras that support incredible zoom, but those technologies needed more time actually to reach consumers. The same might happen with the under-display screen tech that Oppo just teased, so don’t get too excited about it just yet. But the fact that a company is ready to talk publicly about cameras placed under displays must mean we could soon see such screens around us. Oppo, of course, isn’t the only company developing the technology. Xiaomi shared a similar teaser of its own on the same day Oppo did.

Chris Smith Senior Writer

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.