Just as promised, Chinese smartphone maker unveiled the world’s first under-display selfie camera technology at MWC Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, however, OPPO hasn’t revealed exactly when it will launch the first smartphone with an under-display camera. It has only promised that a device featuring the new technology will arrive “in the near future”.
OPPO’s under-display camera technology makes use of both a custom transparent material for the display as well as a custom camera sensor. The display area right above the camera sensor is made using a highly transparent material that has a redesigned pixel structure to allow light to easily pass to the camera sensor. As shown by the company’s demo video last week, the screen area above the camera sensor works as normal when the camera is not in use.
The camera sensor, which is larger in size compared to conventional sensors, also has a large aperture that helps in gathering more light. Since having a screen in front of the camera sensor will have an obvious impact on the image quality, OPPO has come up with advanced algorithms that deal with haze removal, white balance, and HDR to make sure that the images are on par with those taken using more conventional selfie cameras.
It may be noted that OPPO isn’t the only smartphone maker that is working on bringing under-display camera technology to the market. Rival Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is also planning to use the technology in its future devices.