Xiaomi first showed off its under-display selfie camera technology earlier last year but it was far from ready for commercial rollout. The Chinese giant had revealed that the photo quality wasn’t up to the mark and there was still time before the under-display selfie camera went mainstream. Well, Xiaomi has today not only shown off its third-generation under-display camera technology but also announced that it will launch a phone with an under-display camera in 2021.
If you remember the initial prototypes, it will simple to find the under-display camera placement due to slight perforations in the display. The phone makers were still trying to figure out how to perfectly hide the camera and offer a fullscreen experience earlier last year. But today, in an official blog post, Xiaomi reveals that its new under-display camera tech helps ‘perfectly disguise’ the selfie lens.
Your next question should be – How did Xiaomi manage to hide the selfie camera? The Chinese giant has managed to make the selfie lens hidden, thanks to a “self-developed pixel arrangement” that has doubled the number of horizontal and vertical pixels. This allows the company to achieve the same pixel density over the selfie camera as the rest of the display. You can see the new pixel arrangement in the image below:
The company further adds that the display above the selfie camera will, thus, offer you the “same brightness, color gamut, and color accuracy” as the rest of the panel. As for how the selfie camera works, Xiaomi allows light to pass through the “gap area of sub-pixels,” which is then coupled with an “optimized camera algorithm” to offer the same selfie photo quality as a standard notch or waterdrop selfie camera.
Xiaomi has also developed a special circuit design “to hide more components under the RGB sub-pixels” and offer an increased light transmittance at the camera section of the display. Which Xiaomi smartphone will be the first to adopt the under-display camera solution, you ask?
Xiaomi’s Mi Mix lineup has always been the one to showcase its newest innovations. With the Chinese giant only showing off the Mi Mix Alpha and not unveiling a new Mi Mix phone in 2020, we expect Mi Mix 4 to be the first mass-produced from Xiaomi to include an under-display selfie camera.
Apart from Xiaomi, its Chinese competitor Oppo has also shown off a working under-display camera prototype earlier last year. The ZTE Axon 20 5G, which will launch in just four days, will be the first commercial phone with an under-display selfie camera.
