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ZTE Will Launch 1st Phone with Front Camera Under the Display.

By Laura Tucker
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With the trend to make smartphone displays as big as possible and to limit the amount of bezel seen on phones, it doesn’t leave much space for some of the necessary components, such as the selfie camera. ZTE has found how to solve the issue: by putting the front camera under the display.

Is ZTE the First?

There have been other phone manufacturers that were first to show how to get rid of the notch. Apple was the first to put the notch in went it went bezel-less. Many people hated the notch, but many companies copied it as well in some form or another. Efforts to get rid of the notch involved a pop-up selfie camera and a hole-punch display.

Xiaomi and Oppo were the first manufacturers to show that you could be bezel-less and remove the notch by putting the front camera, also known as the selfie camera, under the display. It takes the front-facing images through the display.

Prototypes were created, but Xiaomi VP Lu Weibing said in January of this year that there were still too many technological challenges. The high density of the pixels in today’s phone displays blocked too much of the light from the camera lens and sensor when the camera was placed underneath. Weibing said production on these phones wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

ZTE Front Camera Under the Display

The ZTE Corporation announced this week that it would launch the Axon 20 5G in China on September 1. With the other manufacturers trying to figure out how to make it happen, ZTE will be the first to release a smartphone with a front camera under the display.

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In the announcement, ZTE referred to the creation of the world’s first pressure-sensitive display, the world’s first naked-eye 3D display smartphone, and the world’s first foldable dual-screen smartphone.

It will feature “a compact, uniquely-curved display employing the advanced Oncell-Metal Mesh and COP packing technologies.” Chinese regulator TENAA said the Axon 20 5G will have a 32MP front camera and a quad-rear-camera arrangement with 64MP, 8MP, and a pair of 2MP modules. It’s rumored that the phone also includes a 6.92-inch HD OLED display and up to 12GB of RAM.

The ZTE Axon 10 Pro 5G will release in China, the Nordic countries, and the Middle East on September 1 and will be “the world’s first 5G smartphone with under-display camera.”

After ZTE’s announcement, OLED manufacturer Visionox announced it would start mass production of displays with under-screen cameras. The company has had success increasing light transmission by using different organic and non-organic film materials. It’s unknown if the Visionox screen will be used on the ZTE phone.

If you don’t want to wait, read on to learn about seven of the best camera phones you can buy in 2020.

Image Credit: “ZTE Blade S6 Plus” by Janitors and “Spare smartphone cameras, Huaqiangbei mobile phone components market, Shenzhen” by Tom.Whitwell

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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