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OPPO and Xiaomi Show off Under Display Selfie Camera; Here’s How It Works

After the under display fingerprint scanner, it looks like under display selfie camera is going to be the new trend. OPPO and Xiaomi have shown off the concept for a smartphone with the under display selfie camera. They both posted a video on Twitter with a working unit that has selfie camera hidden under the display.

OPPO’s Under Display Selfie Camera

OPPO’s Twitter handle has posted a video that shows the prototype of a phone that has the front camera under the display. However, OPPO didn’t reveal too many details about this new technology.

Further, there is also no announcement about the availability of such display on an OPPO smartphone.

Xiaomi’s Under Display Selfie Camera

After OPPO posted their video, Xiaomi also showed its own concept of the under-display camera. Xiaomi even claims to file a patent for the new technology last week.


The video they’ve posted on Twitter shows a phone with a selfie camera embedded under the screen. Xiaomi has attached this display prototype to the Mi 9 and the in-display selfie camera is also of 20MP.

How does it work?

Xiaomi has explained the functioning of the under display camera with an infographic. According to that, the area of the display with the camera will turn transparent while clicking a photo to allow the light to pass. This area has low reflection and high transparency to make sure the light falling upon the display does not stop the image formation.

Xiaomi’s infographic translated from Chinese (Source: Twitter)

Apart from acting as a display, this area of the screen also acts as a lens. The above infographic also confirms that this area of display will be the normal when the camera is not in use. It is not confirmed yet whether this area will respond to touch.

When will these smartphones come?

If we talk about availability, just like OPPO, Xiaomi also hasn’t revealed the launch timeline of its phone with an in-display selfie camera. However, we expect Xiaomi to bring in-display camera phone earlier as they have patented the tech. We may see this smartphone before this year end.

We have seen different new ways attempted by smartphone manufacturers to expand the screen to body ratio in smartphones. From pop-up selfie cameras to punch-hole displays and flipping cameras, there have been multiple concepts. It will be interesting to see how this new technology works in future smartphones.

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Satyendra Pal Singh

Satyendra explores the latest happenings in the tech world and writes stories about those. He likes to play around with the latest gadgets and shares his views through articles. In his free time, you can find him watching movies/TV shows and/or reading books.