Last year, Xiaomi gave us our first peek at its under-display camera technology that hides a working selfie camera below your screen. Fast-forward to today and Xiaomi says that it's nearly ready to launch this feature to the public.
Xiaomi will officially begin mass production of smartphones with under-display cameras in 2021. The company hasn't named any specific devices that will include its under-display camera yet.
This is Xiaomi's third generation of under-display camera technology. It allows the screen to pass light through the gap area of sub-pixels, Xiaomi explains. And because it has doubled the number of horizontal and vertical pixels to get the same pixel density above the camera as on the rest of the display, the area of screen above the camera has the same brightness, color gamut, and color accuracy as the rest of the display.
Xiaomi also touts that its created an optimization algorithm for its under-display camera that'll allow it "match the imaging performance of conventional front cameras."
Xiaomi has released a video comparing its third generation under-display camera to a smartphone with a hole-punch camera. In regular use, it's difficult to make out the selfie camera below the display, but at one point near the end of the video we can see a small darkened square in the upper left corner of the display where the camera is located.
Under-display camera tech is exciting because it means you can have a full, edge-to-edge screen without a notch or a hole-punch. Some manufacturers have gotten a round this by using a motorized pop-up or flip camera mechanism, but those have moving parts that some folks may want to avoid
