ZTE plans to launch first smartphone with sub-screen camera next month

If you want to buy a phone with a front screen camera right now, you’re out of luck. Although several companies have tested this feature, none have yet shipped it to consumers. But that should change soon, as ZTE aims to become the first company to mass produce and ship a phone with an under-display camera next month.

The Axon 20 5G will launch in China on September 1. ZTE notes in its press release that “all the major players in the industry” are working on under-screen cameras, but it plans to be the first to release a smartphone with this feature. The Axon 20 5G is said to be the “world’s first mass-produced 5G smartphone,” according to ZTE.

Image: ZTE

Several companies have teased smartphones with under-screen cameras over the past year. Oppo and Xiaomi both showed prototypes of smartphones that included a front camera hidden under the screen in 2019. Xiaomi explained that its under-screen camera would be integrated into the top of the device and covered with a “special low glass. reflection with high transmittance ”, allowing the display to become transparent for taking pictures. Oppo showed a prototype of its first phone with this feature to the folks at MWC Shanghai in 2019, but it needed some work. As Engadget written in his labs from 2019, the camera has “a lot of hazing”.

For several years, companies have been moving towards smartphones with edge-to-edge screens. Instead of the front camera taking up part of the screen space, some companies have tried to get the front camera out 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 underscreen cameras offer a more elegant solution, with no moving parts inside the phone.

ZTE has yet to reveal how much the Axon 20 5G will cost or whether it will arrive in other countries. The Chinese telecom company also didn’t detail the phone’s specs, but a recent listing from Chinese regulator TENAA, as spotted 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 specifications announced on the phone include a 6.92-inch HD OLED display and up to 12GB of RAM.