If you currently want to buy a phone with an under-display front camera, you are in luck. While several companies have tested the feature, no one has yet to ship to consumers. But that should change soon, as ZTE aims to become the first company mass-producing and shipping a phone with an under-display camera next month.
The Axon 20 5G will launch in China on September 1st. ZTE notes in its press release that “all major players in the sector” are working on cameras under-display, but it intends to be the first to get a smartphone with this feature out the door. The Axon 20 5G is said to be ‘the first world produced 5G smartphone’, according to ZTE.
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Image: ZTE
Several companies have placed smartphones with under-display cameras in the last year. Oppo and Xiaomi both showed prototype smartphones that include a front-facing camera hidden under the screen in 2019. Xiaomi stated that the camera below the display would be embedded at the top of the device and covered with a ‘special-low reflective glass’ with high throughput, ”making the display transparent for taking pictures. Oppo had a prototype built of its first phone with the feature to people at MWC Shanghai in 2019, but it needed work. As Engadget wrote in her 2019 hands-on, the camera has a “ridiculous amount.”
For several years, companies have been moving toward smartphones with edge-to-edge screens. Instead of the front camera occupying some of the screen space, some companies have tried to pop the front camera from the top of the phone. More recently, Lenovo released a new gaming phone that includes a pop-up selfie camera on the side of the phone. But cameras under display provide a more elegant solution, without moving parts inside the phone.
ZTE has yet to discover how much the Axon 20 5G will cost as if it will arrive in other countries. The Chinese telecommunications company also did not detail the specifications of the phone, but a recent mention by Chinese regulator TENAA, as detected by XDA developers, says the Axon 20 5G will include a 32-megapixel front camera, a 64-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera and a pair of two-megapixel rear cameras. Other specs rumored on the phone include a 6.92-inch HD OLED display and up to 12GB of RAM.
