Farewell to notches and hole-punches? ZTE expected to announce mobe with under-display camera next month
- Reference: 1597739357
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/18/zte_under_screen_cam/
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The device, dubbed the Axon 20 5G, isn't necessarily the first among demos, but it's the first that'll be sold in shops. As we saw last year, Middle Kingdom mobile giant OPPO has flirted with the conceptual form factor, unveiling a demo device towards the tail end of last year. It took less than nine months for the tech to evolve from quirky concept moonshot to something ready for production.
It's not clear who will actually manufacture the panel, but the smart money is on Visinox, which also makes displays for Xiaomi. This component manufacturer showcased its under-screen display tech earlier this year. It's possible the firm has already inked deals with various smartphone OEMs, resulting in an inevitable slew of under-screen camera devices.
The force driving this feature is obvious: people want larger displays on their phones without having to carry devices that are physically bigger. The biggest first step on this path was Apple's controversial introduction of the notch in the iPhone X in 2017. The notch subsequently shrank, with vendors competing to offer slimmer and slimmer bumps.
Later down the line, Huawei's youth-oriented mobile subsidiary Honor introduced the hole-punch camera, which shrunk the selfie camera into a small dot and placed it within the display panel.
In the long run, these design adaptations were little more than a fudge – a temporary bandage while the industry waited for something better to come along. A few years ago, Christian Schwamkrug, director at Porsche Design, told your correspondent why the firm was holding off on introducing a notch on its ultra-luxe smartphones. The reason, he said, was that rectangles simply make sense from a cognitive perspective. Bumps and "pimples" don't.
Of course, if ZTE is to make a success of this new form factor, it'll have to answer a few questions to assuage the phone-buying public. Will facial authentication work properly when there's a sheet of LCD between the camera and the user? As for selfies, will they look as good as on an equivalent conventional device?
ZTE hasn't announced any specs for the Axon 20 5G yet, although it notes the device will be launched on 1 September in the firm's home market of China. Whether it'll see an international release is anyone's guess. ®
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Re: I would be happy with a no camera phone
I was about to make the same point. Have never ever used the front camera on my phone or tablet, and rarely (ie once every 6 weeks or so) even use the rear camera and even then I have an alternative close by if needed.
Re: I would be happy with a no camera phone
Ech, I’m as keen to bust out the pitchforks and flaming torches at the mere mention of the word “selfie” as anyone, but I will admit to using my phone’s front camera for the occasional Skype call.
Re: I would be happy with a no selfie phone
I occasionally find the front facing camera very useful on my phone. Not for selfies but for those situations where you need to see somewhere you can't get your eye to but you can squeeze the phone into. I use the main camera a lot more for these jobs, but sometimes you need to be able to see the screen while aiming and sometimes that requires the front facing one.
Re: I would be happy with a no selfie phone
Yes, but you are probably not a chronically self-obsessed teenager who must always be sending selfies to various boy/girl friends at 2am. My eldest refuses to put her phone on silent (imagine that for 5 months lockdown) and we can hear every time her friends send another picture .. I often wonder if they sleep at all.
How many users will notice?
Most phone users have such low expectations of photographic quality that I'd guess that they'll not notice the inevitable degradation of the image. The image processing required isn't going to overwhelm the hardware.
Would literally pay a bit NOT to have a front-facing camera, or to just have it ABOVE the screen.
Why do we need all this seamless junk? Give me a few mm physical bezel around the screen (less likely to crack), and then put the camera, sensors, etc. ABOVE it and a button BELOW it.
There are literally features on modern smartphones I would pay not to have, and others I would pay to have.
I'll pay not to have Siri / Alexa / etc.
I'll pay not to have a stupid integrated screen but just a plain, square bit of touch-glass.
I'll pay to have a removable battery.
I'll pay to have protective corners and a phone that DOES NOT NEED a case to keep it safe. Seriously. It's like giving people a car and then telling them they need to put bumpers on it.
I'll pay to have a headphone socket, even if the phone gets longer.
I'll pay to have PLAIN, STANDARD Android with no apps.
The market is atrocious for phones and just does not understand what I want as a consumer.
The closest I can get is a Samsung XCover Pro. Rugged, waterproof, removable battery, dual-sim (if you buy the right one), headphone socket, etc. but it has a fingerprint reader that I don't want... a selfie camera notch I don't want, multiple cameras on the back that I don't want, and it doesn't do MHL / Dex over the USB-C port (which I would pay for). I'd literally pay to have the S4/S5 mini IR blaster put back on it too.
"The market is atrocious for phones and just does not understand what I want as a consumer."
That's because you aren't sufficiently numerous to be considered the consumer. Neither am I. Neither are probably most of the commenter on here.
The consumer is the person obsessed with documenting every aspect of their life with their phone. They are the ones who use the front camera; who don't care about replacing the battery when it dies after a couple of years because they'll just get a new phone; who are driven by feature count and fashion rather than function.
And there's billions of them out there...
Re: "The market is atrocious for phones and just does not understand what I want as a consumer."
I think it's far more like "HD/4K/3D etc.". Everyone wants it because it's there. Now that everyone has it, and either doesn't really use it or doesn't need anything more, it's started back going the other way.
People aren't gonna buy a new mobile every year in perpetuity. They aren't getting that much faster or better each time round any more.
Compare even an old Android with a new one, massive difference. Compare a new one with its competitors? Not much difference. Every phone has almost every option because they have to do that to compete. Nobody's going to buy a phone without GPS any more, for instance, even if they hardly ever use it.
And if you're not needing to buy a new phone, then you want one that'll last longer. Removable batteries are coming back. You can say "ditch headphones", maybe, because USB-C still allows that functionality and Bluetooth has obsoleted it. But when it's something that another function *doesn't* provide, then it becomes far more useful
It's not that phones won't still have 10 cameras. It's that ALL phones will have 10 cameras. So who cares about a phone with 11 cameras? And when a camera is "good enough" for selfies, then why does it need to be in the screen itself as a visible blob of obstruction?
There's only one generation that are really doing all the selfie-stuff, and that generation are nearly growing out of it. The next generation and the generations before don't really care about it.
We've reached saturation. The only way to distinguish is to give people things other phones don't have, or to make their phones different in some way.
Re: "The market is atrocious for phones and just does not understand what I want as a consumer."
Or, in short, phones have now turned into fridges. They all do the same thing, and the only practical difference for most people is price, the label, and the number of shelves.
Re: "The market is atrocious for phones and just does not understand what I want as a consumer."
People aren't gonna buy a new mobile every year in perpetuity.
Well MrsConfused used to buy handbags every year, often she'd buy several (thankfully she's cut back on that habit).
For some, phones are fashion accessories and as long as the manufactures can persuade enough punters that they're fashion items then they'll keep selling more.
Other people dread the idea of getting a new phone and all the hassle associated with either beating it in to working the way we want or being beaten by it into suffering the way it wants to work.
Smudge proof?
Smudging a camera is the biggest problem and it will only get worse if you cannot see where the camera is.
Bevelless phones are more of a "because we can" feature rather than a response to market demand.
So no-one's....
Going to call out the further implications of this tech?
Think having anything with a screen capable of having a camera hidden behind it.
Some would make sense - camera hidden in a cash machine/ATM/hole in the wall. Bezel-less laptop screen without the F7 key popup hack for the webcam.
To the less pleasant, things like bus stop screens, tourist information screens, ads in shopping centres. To truly unpleasant like that big widescreen TV in your hotel room.. Or the screens in toilets like in service stations.
Me, I like knowing where the damn camera is.
Big Brother because with this he truly could be watching you.
I would be happy with a no selfie phone
Rear camera can be useful on occasion in those times when you don't have a camera but need to record something
But if you're not in the selfie obsessed demographic then front camera not needed.
Wonder if there's any stats on how many people actually make regular, widespread use of selfie cameras