Xiaomi’s under-display camera tech will ship in smartphones next year

Xiaomi intends to launch mass-producing smartphones next year with its camera technology under display, the company announced today. This is technically the third generation of technology that Xiaomi has developed, the company says, although the first and second versions it has produced still find their way into a mass-market consumer device. Xiaomi showed off the technology compared to a more traditional hole-punch-notch in a video posted on its YouTube channel.

According to Xiaomi, the latest version of the technology works by showing the selfie camera through the holes in the subpixels of the display, which are the red, green and blue dots that combine to make each pixel. Xiaomi says that the area of ​​the view above the camera has the same density of pixels as the rest of the screen, so it can “perfectly hide” the selfie camera below. Xiaomi adds that the selfie camera itself should match the performance of more typical front-facing cameras.

Image: Xiaomi

While it says the screen area above the camera should match the “brightness, color spectrum, and color properties” of the rest of the display, Xiaomi’s blog post is not named if the panel itself is OLED or LCD, or any type of resolution we can expect it to be.

Despite Xiaomi’s claims that the selfie camera is perfectly disguised, a small square shadow still appears visible behind the display at the 0:29 mark in its promotional video.

Images posted on Twitter by Ice Universe of the device look like a similar, though very faint, round discoloration showing where the selfie camera is.

Smartphone manufacturers have been plaguing cameras for a short time under-display, but so far the technology is still showing good commercialization. Xiaomi and Oppo both introduced the technology back in June last year, and Oppo unveiled a working prototype at MWC Shanghai that month. However, Engadget reported at the time that the effect was not perfect, and that the area of ​​the screen above the camera appeared more pixels than the rest of the screen. Vivo also had plans to show its take on the technology in a concept phone at MWC this year before the event was canceled due to the coronavirus.

Xiaomi may not be the first smartphone manufacturer to bring the technology to a mass-market device. Earlier this month, ZTE said it would launch a smartphone on September 1 with an under-display camera called the ZTE Axon 20 5G. However, it is currently unclear whether the device will launch outside of China.

Update August 28, 8:22 pm ET: Updated with Xiaomi promotional video.