Hello Pinchers!
We are pushing further toward a future, where there are no bezels on our smartphones, no notch, no punch hole nothing, just a cleandisplay from top to bottom. The best solution for that is under-display camera technology and companies are racing to be the first to implement this tech in a mass-produced handset. ZTE announced that they will be the first to introduce a working smartphone with this technology on September 1. It will be the first commercial under-display camera phone you can buy but the problem is we don't know whether or not the front camera on this ZTE phone is able to produce good photos.
Under display camera phones right now produce photos that are washed out in nature. So we don't know whether or not the selfies takes from this ZTE phone will be able to match the quality of a traditional camera setup but what we do know is that Xiaomi's under-display camera phone may very well take good selfie photos. Xiaomi announced a few days ago that they are going to mass-produce the under-display camera phones starting next year. They even shared this video show casing the under-display camera tech they are working is technically the third generation. Although the first and second versions it produced have yet to find their way into a mass-market consumer device.
Xiaomi even said that the quality matches the imaging performance of conventional front cameras which is a bold statement. They even shared this image on Weibo showcasing the difference between their first and third generation of this camera technology. The one on the right looks really impressive with proper colors and sharpness, Xiaomi explained they have made new pixel arrangement so that enough light can pass through these pixels in order to minimize any glare. If this image is any indication then they have done a pretty great job at it. This new Pixel arrangement also helped them to minimize the appearance of the front camera. The current implementations albeit in the prototype stage show that you can see the camera sensor in certain lightings or in certain backgrounds. But in Xiaomi's phone, you can barely see it which is impressive.
Now how it will work? Any idea? Let me explain.
Phone manufacturers do all kinds of circuses to make the phone appear bezel-less including having monstrous notches, which make the phone look ugly and then including wallpapers to hide the notch, pop-up camera which compromise on the durability of the phone and so on. But there are a few things that a phone should have like the ear piece, microphone, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, the fingerprint ID and the front facing camera. Out of which, certain things like the microphone can be hidden or sandwiched into the display itself, certain other things like the fingerprint sensor can be moved to the back of the phone.
But the front facing camera is always a problem. And in this video, we'll discuss about 2 methods with which we can embed the front facing camera right into the display itself. Let's get right into it! Before we talk about screen embedded cameras, we need to understand about the different types of displays. You see, there are 2 types of displays that are majorly used across all smartphones: The In-plane Switching displays or IPS displays and the Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode displays or AMOLED displays. IPS displays work by having a back light source that is always on and then passing the light from this source through a liquid crystal matrix, which will allow/block or change color of this light and this is why these type of displays are also called 'Liquid Crystal Displays' or LCDs. The second type of displays doesn't have a back-light source and then a layer to convert it, but rather have Organic Light Emitting Diode, which are of the size of each individual pixels.
These can be turned on or off and produce different colors by themselves. So, they have just a single layer and they are generally considered better than the IPS displays due to the control over light on each individual pixels and also the higher contrast ratio. Now that we have understood about the different types of displays, let's talk about screen embedded cameras. The first method with which we can achieve screen embedded cameras is by manufacturing the Light Emitting Diode in such a way that they are transparent when they are turned off and the camera is attached directly to the display itself. This way, when the selfie camera needs to be turned on, the individual pixels right in-front of the camera can be turned off, which essentially turns them transparent and the photo can be snapped. This can only work with AMOLED displays because, as discussed earlier, LCD displays have an obstructing back-light. The second method with which we can achieve screen-embedded camera is in the baby phase of its research.
This method uses hundreds of thousands of tiny photo sensors, of the size of the individual pixels which would effectively form part of the screen and be invisible to the naked eye. The outputs of all these tiny cameras would then be processed into a final image. Now, like anything else, screen embedded cameras do have their advantages and disadvantages. The first advantage is the availability of more screen real-estate and the ability to design a truly bezel-less screen. The second advantage would be in video calls where people could talk looking at the screen just like how they communicate in real life.
Now, talking about the disadvantages might give you an idea about why this technology isn't popular yet. First of all, it's really difficult to make truly transparent OLEDs and the ones we can manufacture today is mostly translucent. The second disadvantage is the fact that the quality of photos that we can get with both of these methods as of now is pretty mediocre. Finally, this technology is extremely costly as of now. Now, the screen embedded cameras are definitely not going to make its way on any of the phones that are going to be launched in 2019, but we do have a taste of this technology from the under-screen fingerprint scanners that are there in phones like Oneplus 6T.
Xiaomi is so confident that they said they will mass-produce this as soon as next year which means at some point in 2021 you can own a phone with under-display camera tech. The ZTE one doesn't count because they will probably not launch it outside of China. This could also mean Xiaomi could beat Samsung to this technology. The last time we heard Samsung may not include this tech on the Galaxy S21 according to Ross young due to production difficulties. The camera parts are costly and right now have low yield rates. So that could mean Samsung is sticking to the punch hole camera system, although they have gotten smaller and is not as intrusive as they were before but a clean display with absolutely no interruption improves the user experience even more.
So, that's all for now pinchers.
