Hello pinchers! It's tech news time!
It seems like we’ve been arguing about selfie cameras for years now. Ever since bezels started to vanish and we went full-screen, we’ve seen a ton of different housings for front-facing cameras. Notch designs have arguably been the most divisive topic in the tech space for a while now, and I’ll be so glad for that topic to disappear. Early notch designs, propelled by the notch in the iPhone X, were pretty ugly. They were big, intrusive, and broke the symmetry of a smartphone. In fact, they were so ugly that companies like Google eventually backtracked and brought back bezels in the Pixel 4.
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| Img source: gadgets.ndtv.com |
Other companies resisted and tried new designs. Such as hole punch, pop up cameras, and even sliders. While these designs are fun to see, they all seem to dance around the key problem, not solve it. A hidden selfie camera means we can finally stop having this debate. No more bickering over notch vs punch hole,no more arguing about moving parts. We can finally re-focus the conversation towards something actually important. Clearly, we’ve still got a ways to go before the selfie camera can be completely hidden while in use.
Everyone expected that it would be Samsung who's going to commercialize this tech by launching it in a mass-produced smartphone,the Galaxy S21. But it seems Nokia may actually beat Samsung to market by releasing it before them on their upcoming flagship the Nokia 9.3 Purview. Back in January, it was reported that Nokia is testing the under-display camera tech on their next flagship. The company was, however, testing a pop-up camera system as an alternative because the former is a novel solution. It was expected that Nokia would choose the pop-up camera mechanism but it looks like Nokia chose the under-display tech. It's being reported that Nokia found the under-display camera stable enough for use in retail versions.
Companies like Samsung, Xiaomi, and Oppo have been working on this tech for quite a while now. But hearing Nokia could beat these companies to market is sort of surprising. Not only the under-display camera, but the Nokia 9.3 will also have the 120Hz display that will bring it in the leagues of Samsung Galaxy S20 and OnePlus 8 Pro. This should help position the flagship as a more direct competitor to the S20 Ultra and OnePlus 8 Pro, especially when combined with the all-screen design with under-display camera technology. The Phone will also have a 108MP camera setup with a possibility of a penta-camera system similar to the Nokia 9.
It's being rumored that Nokia is ditching Light camera technology as a partner because of the lack of post-launch support for the Nokia 9 last year. Nokia is now believed to be working with anew partner to perfect its next-gen camera system. Which partner remains to be seen, but it seems the two are planning several big upgrades. Like I've mentioned the main camera on this system is going to be 64MP with the addition of a 108MP ultra wide sensor. Other features look set to include the Snapdragon 865, 5G network support, and stock Android. To be clear, Tipster Nokia Anew has an impressive track record when it comes to Nokia leaks but I would still suggest you take this information with a grain of salt.
Because Oppo and even Samsung have kept stressing that the under-display camera tech is not yet ready for prime time aka shipping in actual smartphones, that's the reason Samsung decided to use punch hole on the Galaxy Fold 2 instead of the under-display camera. But perhaps Nokia wants to one-up everyone else in this regard and if that's the case it remains to be seen whether it can pull off such a feat. Let me know what do you think down in the comments and till then keep pinching.
