The Challenges and Opportunities of Under-Display Technology in Smartphones

For as much as we talk about other companies like Samsungs and Apple, they would never ship this (under-display technology) and so we need companies like ZTE to be taking that tech risk and to be putting the stuff out there to get that ball rolling. Because now we actually have something to work with and judge the quality of a new tech on. This is really interesting stuff.

Testing the Under-Display Technology

--------------------------------

My big thought while testing this (under-display technology) is how much better can it get and will it actually get better quickly? When you think about it, all these other under-display technologies that we've been working with with smartphones for the last few years started off bad and then got on a curve getting pretty good quickly. The under-display speakers started off bad today they are slightly quieter and slightly more muffled than a regular speaker but they're pretty close they're pretty close.

The Under-Display Fingerprint Reader

------------------------------------

Again, the under-display fingerprint reader started off slow but they're close now they're just slightly slower and slightly less reliable than the old gold standard Touch ID button. So it's no surprise that the first under-screen selfie camera is bad but how long before it's only a tiny bit softer and hazier than a normal selfie camera? Then how fast does it get good?

Improving Under-Display Technology

--------------------------------

I actually got to speak briefly with some of the people who are literally working on this (under-display technology) and they're already working on future generations of this tech that we'll see better in later phones. They are very confident, confident that they can hide this better with better pixel matching and better lines of resolution.

The Future of Under-Display Technology

--------------------------------------

But here's another question, what does this mean for privacy? Like if this technology gets really good what does it mean for like how screens of the future will look? My initial thought was oh now if we don't know where the selfie camera is in a phone we won't really know where to look when taking a selfie like will we look at the side or the corner or maybe it's in the middle someday?

The Impact on Design and Security

-----------------------------------

But to be honest, you probably just correct the way the eyes look with software. Facetime already does this, surface pro x already does this so that's not even new. But does that mean laptops of the future will be able to put the selfie camera anywhere? Maybe further from the edge in the middle and can they be on any time like if i don't have an indicator of any type i it could just be on all the time? Like imagine a hotel room TV with a camera behind it, that's terrifying.

A Solution for Privacy Concerns

-------------------------------

So there's definitely something I'm going to be keeping an eye on. I think the next logical step when this stuff starts to happen more often is to add an indicator light in the software somewhere so that we know when the camera is on like like iOS did. So there's less privacy concerns and i can feel as comfortable at least as i did with those pop-up selfie cameras.

Should We Prioritize Under-Display Technology?

-----------------------------------------------

But let me know what you think of this whole idea of putting the camera behind the display. Was it worth it? Do you think hiding the camera is worth the worse image quality? But I think in this first one, it's pretty clear no it's not worth the trade-off. But my question to you is in the future if this gets really good do you actually even want your your display to be hidden? Do you really want that full screen beautiful phone at the expense of not knowing where the camera is?

The Ridge Wallet: A Sponsor for the Video

------------------------------------------

Shout out to today's video sponsor, The Ridge Wallet. A sleek industrial lightweight modern wallet so it doesn't bulge out but it doesn't have to. It's just a modern wallet unlike what most people have been carrying which was designed a long time ago once you realize you don't need to be carrying around receipts and pictures and gift cards you might as well upgrade to a modern wallet to match your modern wallet situation.

The Ridge Wallet Holds Up to 12 Cards Plus Cash

------------------------------------------------

The ridge wallet holds up to 12 cards plus room for cash. There are over 30 colors and styles at this point including stuff like carbon fiber or titanium. And it's well built to the point where they also offer a lifetime warranty so you could buy this one wallet and carry it for life which is pretty sweet.

A 45-Day Return Policy

------------------------

There's also a 45-day return policy so if you buy it use it and somehow don't like it, you can return it for all your money back. So all you have to do is go to ridge.com mkbhd to shop and see all the different colors and finishes and stuff like that. And if you use the code mkbhd you'll get a special discount.

Conclusion

----------

In conclusion, under-display technology is an area of innovation in smartphones that holds many challenges but also opportunities. We will have to wait and see how this tech improves over time, and whether it will become a standard feature in future phones.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up mkbhd here and new phone this is the zte axon 20 5g so you might have heard of this phone already but also probably not it's a fairly standard newish mid-grade phone and looking at it you might not notice anything super different it's a big phone of course it does have this orange faux leather finish quad cameras on the back pretty big display doesn't look like anything too crazy we haven't seen before well except one thing this phone does have one thing we've never seen before in any other phone it's actually up here at the top you can kind of catch that maybe how about if we maybe if we zoom in a little bit maybe you can see it a little better now or if we switch to a macro camera you can kind of see it ah there it is now you can see what i'm talking about so this phone has the world's first under display selfie camera if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic i would love to do a video going out to people on the street and handing them this phone and saying you notice anything different about this screen because i just feel like almost no one would actually pick up on it because if you're not looking for it it's almost invisible but the second you notice it you can't unnotice it but we all knew this was coming we've seen multiple parts of smartphones work towards this perfect all screen phone thing for a while now we saw the fingerprint reader go from the button to underneath the display we even saw speakers on some phones go from above the display to right behind it vibrating through the glass so the last thing left which is also the hardest thing has been the camera so our eye has gotten kind of used to all these notches and cutouts and hole punches in almost every new smartphone display these days somewhere around the top either in the middle or the corner that's just a cut out a hole in the screen you're gonna have to have for the selfie camera and there were other methods like pop-up cameras of different sizes and shapes and while they technically did help achieve the goal of the seamless front display thing and i happen to really like them for the security benefit of blocking the selfie camera when it's not in use it was a loss in pretty much every other category to the manufacturer it's a moving part in a phone which introduces higher probability of a failure point it's worse and more difficult for waterproofing it costs more it takes up more space in the phone so i liked them but they've been kind of a work around the whole time so this was the inevitable thing that new technology that would allow us to put the camera behind the display and now that i've actually used it and looked at it i can see why no one else has shipped it yet so first of all it's not a super high-end display it's a nice screen but it's not super bright it's a 6.9 inch pretty big oled at 1080p and 90 hertz fine it's a 4 to 500 phone but right up there at the top you can see there's something a little different going on and when you really look for it well it's really obvious so let's get technical for a second to explain what's actually happening here there are a few things necessary to make this happen you have the 32 megapixel camera itself back there inside the phone then you have basically a notch cutout in the display but the display itself continues over this notch in essentially half the pixel density so 720p equivalent resolution with smaller pixels so there's actually space between the pixels for the camera to see through and then when you actually open the selfie camera and it's on there's a driver manipulating those remaining pixels to make them semi-transparent and lastly there's literally a defogging algorithm running to help the camera software figure out what's behind those semi-transparent pixels then it merges it all together into one image and that image is not great it's impressive that it works of course but the selfies are soft like charmin soft they look like uh the lens maybe had like some fingerprints smeared over it or something but no this is this is the way it looks this is the image the camera produces now how much of that is due to the fact that this is a 400 zte phone selfie camera versus the fact that it's a brand new one-of-a-kind selfie camera technology hard to say but i mean this is like literal best case world-class lighting situation and this is how it looks so it's clear that there's a bit of an image quality trade-off here most of the noticeably bad parts of these selfies is in the highlights so like anytime there's bright light or something where a lot of light should be shining through the semi-transparent pixels well you can start to see the semi-transparent pixels that aren't quite disappearing and kind of add a haze to everything you can even pull the white notification shade over the selfie camera while the video is recording and see pretty much all of those pixels light up which is crazy the trade-off is real but if that's the trade-off just to hide the camera then the real question is how hidden is the camera and uh it's a different answer for different even i'm looking at it now it's it's different in different situations so when the camera is off and you have a dark image or something sort of dark happening at the top of the display it's impressively hidden like it's actually pretty good and if you're if you're looking for it you'll see it but most of the time you're looking at the display head-on at other stuff and it's not distracting it's kind of like the notch or the hole punch camera it just disappears to your eye after a while but even more since the image goes right over the notch i think it looks best in this case but what i noticed is the lighter the pixels or the brighter the ui the more jarring those pixels get and because now the half resolution and all the gaps between the pixels are way more contrasted and obvious here so whether you're looking at it straight or at an angle if stuff is bright it's going to be visible like this is you can see here what it looks like when i pull down the notification shade over it you can see this is maybe worst case scenario but like the pixel by pixel row lag and the the pixelation of everything happening here so yeah it's clearly nowhere near perfect but for a first version it feels about right you know for as much as we talk about other companies like the samsungs and apples of the world they would never ship this and so we need companies like zte to be taking that tech risk and to be putting the stuff out there to get that ball rolling because now we actually have something to work with and judge the quality of a new tech on this is this is really interesting stuff so now my big thought while testing this is how much better can it get and will it actually get better quickly because when you think about it all these other under display technologies that we've been working with with smartphones for the last few years started off bad and then got on this curve getting pretty good quickly the under display speakers started off bad today they are slightly quieter and slightly more muffled than a regular speaker but they're pretty close they're pretty close the under display fingerprint readers again started off slow but they're close now they're just slightly slower and slightly less reliable than the old gold standard touch id button so it's no surprise that the first under screen selfie camera is bad but how long before it's only a tiny bit softer and hazier than a normal selfie camera then how fast does it get good i actually got to speak briefly with some of the people who are literally working on this and they're already working on future generations of this tech that we'll see better in later phones and they are very confident confident that they can hide this better with better pixel matching and better lines of resolution but again that's uh the other half is how good will the picture quality look but here's another question what does this mean for privacy like if this technology gets really good what does this mean for like how screens of the future will look like my initial thought was oh now if we don't know where the selfie camera is in a phone we won't really know where to look when taking a selfie like will we look at the side or the corner or maybe it's in the middle someday but to be honest you probably just correct the way the eyes look with software facetime already does this surface pro x already does this so that's that's not even new but does that mean laptops of the future will be able to put the selfie camera anywhere maybe further from the edge in the middle and can they be on any time like if i don't have an indicator of any type i it could just be on all the time like imagine a hotel room tv with a camera behind it that's terrifying so that's definitely something i'm going to be keeping an eye on i think the next logical step when this stuff starts to happen more often is to add an indicator light in the software somewhere so that we know when the camera is on like like ios did so there's less privacy concerns and i can feel as comfortable at least as i did with those pop-up selfie cameras but let me know what you think of this whole idea of putting the camera behind the display i was originally gonna ask like do you think it's worth it do you think hiding the camera is worth the worse image quality but i think in this first one it's it's pretty clear no it's not worth the trade-off but my question to you is in the future if this gets really good do you actually even want your your display to be hidden do you really want that full screen beautiful phone at the expense of not knowing where the camera is let me know what you think and shout out to today's video sponsor the ridge wallet a sleek industrial lightweight modern wallet so it doesn't bulge out but it doesn't have to it's just a modern wallet unlike what most people have been carrying which was designed a long time ago once you realize you don't need to be carrying around receipts and pictures and gift cards you might as well upgrade to a modern wallet to match your modern wallet situation so the ridge wallet holds up to 12 cards plus room for cash there's over 30 colors and styles at this point including stuff like carbon fiber or titanium and it's well built to the point where they also offer a lifetime warranty so you could buy this one wallet and carry it for life which is pretty sweet there's also a 45-day return policy so if you buy it use it and somehow don't like it you can return it for all your money back so all you have to do is go to ridge.com mkbhd to shop and see all the different colors and finishes and stuff like that and if you use the code mkbhd at checkout you actually get 10 off your order and there's also free worldwide international shipping which is dope so you can check it out at the link below and shout out to ridgewallet for sponsoring this video thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace youhey what's up mkbhd here and new phone this is the zte axon 20 5g so you might have heard of this phone already but also probably not it's a fairly standard newish mid-grade phone and looking at it you might not notice anything super different it's a big phone of course it does have this orange faux leather finish quad cameras on the back pretty big display doesn't look like anything too crazy we haven't seen before well except one thing this phone does have one thing we've never seen before in any other phone it's actually up here at the top you can kind of catch that maybe how about if we maybe if we zoom in a little bit maybe you can see it a little better now or if we switch to a macro camera you can kind of see it ah there it is now you can see what i'm talking about so this phone has the world's first under display selfie camera if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic i would love to do a video going out to people on the street and handing them this phone and saying you notice anything different about this screen because i just feel like almost no one would actually pick up on it because if you're not looking for it it's almost invisible but the second you notice it you can't unnotice it but we all knew this was coming we've seen multiple parts of smartphones work towards this perfect all screen phone thing for a while now we saw the fingerprint reader go from the button to underneath the display we even saw speakers on some phones go from above the display to right behind it vibrating through the glass so the last thing left which is also the hardest thing has been the camera so our eye has gotten kind of used to all these notches and cutouts and hole punches in almost every new smartphone display these days somewhere around the top either in the middle or the corner that's just a cut out a hole in the screen you're gonna have to have for the selfie camera and there were other methods like pop-up cameras of different sizes and shapes and while they technically did help achieve the goal of the seamless front display thing and i happen to really like them for the security benefit of blocking the selfie camera when it's not in use it was a loss in pretty much every other category to the manufacturer it's a moving part in a phone which introduces higher probability of a failure point it's worse and more difficult for waterproofing it costs more it takes up more space in the phone so i liked them but they've been kind of a work around the whole time so this was the inevitable thing that new technology that would allow us to put the camera behind the display and now that i've actually used it and looked at it i can see why no one else has shipped it yet so first of all it's not a super high-end display it's a nice screen but it's not super bright it's a 6.9 inch pretty big oled at 1080p and 90 hertz fine it's a 4 to 500 phone but right up there at the top you can see there's something a little different going on and when you really look for it well it's really obvious so let's get technical for a second to explain what's actually happening here there are a few things necessary to make this happen you have the 32 megapixel camera itself back there inside the phone then you have basically a notch cutout in the display but the display itself continues over this notch in essentially half the pixel density so 720p equivalent resolution with smaller pixels so there's actually space between the pixels for the camera to see through and then when you actually open the selfie camera and it's on there's a driver manipulating those remaining pixels to make them semi-transparent and lastly there's literally a defogging algorithm running to help the camera software figure out what's behind those semi-transparent pixels then it merges it all together into one image and that image is not great it's impressive that it works of course but the selfies are soft like charmin soft they look like uh the lens maybe had like some fingerprints smeared over it or something but no this is this is the way it looks this is the image the camera produces now how much of that is due to the fact that this is a 400 zte phone selfie camera versus the fact that it's a brand new one-of-a-kind selfie camera technology hard to say but i mean this is like literal best case world-class lighting situation and this is how it looks so it's clear that there's a bit of an image quality trade-off here most of the noticeably bad parts of these selfies is in the highlights so like anytime there's bright light or something where a lot of light should be shining through the semi-transparent pixels well you can start to see the semi-transparent pixels that aren't quite disappearing and kind of add a haze to everything you can even pull the white notification shade over the selfie camera while the video is recording and see pretty much all of those pixels light up which is crazy the trade-off is real but if that's the trade-off just to hide the camera then the real question is how hidden is the camera and uh it's a different answer for different even i'm looking at it now it's it's different in different situations so when the camera is off and you have a dark image or something sort of dark happening at the top of the display it's impressively hidden like it's actually pretty good and if you're if you're looking for it you'll see it but most of the time you're looking at the display head-on at other stuff and it's not distracting it's kind of like the notch or the hole punch camera it just disappears to your eye after a while but even more since the image goes right over the notch i think it looks best in this case but what i noticed is the lighter the pixels or the brighter the ui the more jarring those pixels get and because now the half resolution and all the gaps between the pixels are way more contrasted and obvious here so whether you're looking at it straight or at an angle if stuff is bright it's going to be visible like this is you can see here what it looks like when i pull down the notification shade over it you can see this is maybe worst case scenario but like the pixel by pixel row lag and the the pixelation of everything happening here so yeah it's clearly nowhere near perfect but for a first version it feels about right you know for as much as we talk about other companies like the samsungs and apples of the world they would never ship this and so we need companies like zte to be taking that tech risk and to be putting the stuff out there to get that ball rolling because now we actually have something to work with and judge the quality of a new tech on this is this is really interesting stuff so now my big thought while testing this is how much better can it get and will it actually get better quickly because when you think about it all these other under display technologies that we've been working with with smartphones for the last few years started off bad and then got on this curve getting pretty good quickly the under display speakers started off bad today they are slightly quieter and slightly more muffled than a regular speaker but they're pretty close they're pretty close the under display fingerprint readers again started off slow but they're close now they're just slightly slower and slightly less reliable than the old gold standard touch id button so it's no surprise that the first under screen selfie camera is bad but how long before it's only a tiny bit softer and hazier than a normal selfie camera then how fast does it get good i actually got to speak briefly with some of the people who are literally working on this and they're already working on future generations of this tech that we'll see better in later phones and they are very confident confident that they can hide this better with better pixel matching and better lines of resolution but again that's uh the other half is how good will the picture quality look but here's another question what does this mean for privacy like if this technology gets really good what does this mean for like how screens of the future will look like my initial thought was oh now if we don't know where the selfie camera is in a phone we won't really know where to look when taking a selfie like will we look at the side or the corner or maybe it's in the middle someday but to be honest you probably just correct the way the eyes look with software facetime already does this surface pro x already does this so that's that's not even new but does that mean laptops of the future will be able to put the selfie camera anywhere maybe further from the edge in the middle and can they be on any time like if i don't have an indicator of any type i it could just be on all the time like imagine a hotel room tv with a camera behind it that's terrifying so that's definitely something i'm going to be keeping an eye on i think the next logical step when this stuff starts to happen more often is to add an indicator light in the software somewhere so that we know when the camera is on like like ios did so there's less privacy concerns and i can feel as comfortable at least as i did with those pop-up selfie cameras but let me know what you think of this whole idea of putting the camera behind the display i was originally gonna ask like do you think it's worth it do you think hiding the camera is worth the worse image quality but i think in this first one it's it's pretty clear no it's not worth the trade-off but my question to you is in the future if this gets really good do you actually even want your your display to be hidden do you really want that full screen beautiful phone at the expense of not knowing where the camera is let me know what you think and shout out to today's video sponsor the ridge wallet a sleek industrial lightweight modern wallet so it doesn't bulge out but it doesn't have to it's just a modern wallet unlike what most people have been carrying which was designed a long time ago once you realize you don't need to be carrying around receipts and pictures and gift cards you might as well upgrade to a modern wallet to match your modern wallet situation so the ridge wallet holds up to 12 cards plus room for cash there's over 30 colors and styles at this point including stuff like carbon fiber or titanium and it's well built to the point where they also offer a lifetime warranty so you could buy this one wallet and carry it for life which is pretty sweet there's also a 45-day return policy so if you buy it use it and somehow don't like it you can return it for all your money back so all you have to do is go to ridge.com mkbhd to shop and see all the different colors and finishes and stuff like that and if you use the code mkbhd at checkout you actually get 10 off your order and there's also free worldwide international shipping which is dope so you can check it out at the link below and shout out to ridgewallet for sponsoring this video thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace you\n"