Smartphones with under-screen cameras are a step closer to reality

(Image credit: Oppo)

Visionox, a major smartphone OLED display manufacturer in China, seems to have finally figured out a way for mass-producing under-screen cameras. The company released some promotional material about the breakthrough today. Reports from China say that the company is said to begin mass production of the new transparent OLED displays soon.

(Image credit: visionox)

IT Home has reported that the new displays will have much better screen transparency that will enable the camera to function as it is intended to. Visionox hopes that by applying transparent materials, driver circuits that coordinate with the display and camera and organizing the pixel structures in a way that the display quality will also not be compromised in the process.

(Image credit: Visionox)

How does it work?

Improved transparency with a sub-screen

Further, reports say that Visionox refers to the portion that covers the display as a sub-screen. To make the display conductive while remaining transparent to the camera, the company has used organic and inorganic materials with higher transparency in addition to the enhanced film layer structure. 

By doing this, Visionox aims to replace the non-transparent part that covers the camera with a more conductive layer not only to achieve transparency and diffraction of light to the camera inside but improving the best of both worlds.

The company also said that achieving transparency while allowing the display to project content is the most challenging part. It added that by using a special pixel arrangement, it is able to reduce the transition effects between the main and auxiliary screen that covers the camera.

(Image credit: Visionox)

Clearer Selfies with a hidden camera

The main purpose of a new transparent OLED display is to house a camera hidden underneath. Keeping this in mind, the company has used a special driver unit that apparently reduces the interference between the display that covers the camera and its sensors. 

Visionox also claims that through cooperation from concerned manufacturers of cameras it was able to eliminate the glare and fogging effect that was found on early prototypes, by using a special pixel design structure on sub-screen to improve selfies.

However, it added that the cameras and the software algorithms designed for the under-display screens should complement this in the future. That being said, we will have to wait and see how this turns out when devices start hitting the markets in the future.

Abdul Q

Abdul Q is a Content editor at Techradar India. Formerly.