ZTE announces the world's first phone with a behind-the-screen camera:
ZTE has officially announced the world's first commercial phone with a behind-the-screen camera: the ZTE Axon 20 5G. Shrinking phone bezels have made locating the front camera a major design point of phones for the past few years. We've seen big camera notches, small camera notches, round camera cutouts, and pop-up cameras. Rather than any of those compromises, the under-display camera lets you just put the camera under the display, and by peering through the pixels, you can still take a picture. It's the holy grail of front-camera design.
As we've seen in explainers from Xiaomi, these under-display cameras work by thinning out the pixels above the display, either by reducing the number of pixels or by making the pixels smaller, which allows more light to reach the camera. In the area above the camera, manufacturers will have to strike a balance between a denser display with lower-quality camera results or better camera output in exchange for an uglier above-the-camera display.
Also at CNX Software.
See also: Xiaomi's Third Generation Under-Display Camera Tech is Everything I Want
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @05:23AM (7 children)
It seems highly likely to me that this uses the exact same transparent screen technology that Xaomi was demonstrating just weeks ago [soylentnews.org] and the media were calling "useless".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Friday September 04 2020, @07:08AM (5 children)
So it is no more useless, but useful for another useless feature.
JK, a cam behind the screen has the big advantage of having the user watch the other guy and not the camera while chatting. Finally video chat resembles sf movies.
Also, better telescreens, but I would not consider this an advance.
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(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday September 04 2020, @08:00AM (4 children)
I agree: this might be boon for videoconferencing.
On the other hand, it might just slip into uncanny valley. Humans are very good at noticing slight oddities, and if the camera is in roughly the right place, but not exactly the right place it could well be noticeable at a subliminal level. People move around, and heads appear in different positions on screens, so the camera (or cameras) may not correspond exactly with the potion of the pupil(s) of the displayed image, so the gaze direction of the person viewing the screen will be slightly off. Humans are very sensitive to gaze direction (there is a hypothesis (the co-operative eye hypothesis [wikipedia.org]) that our sclera (white bit around the iris) are visible to enhance the display of gaze direction) so use of this technology might just make a video-conference feel weird, rather than natural.
I've wondered if a better approach would be to use two off-axis cameras at the side of the screen and synthesize an image so the gaze direction would be spot-on. Hard to do in real time.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday September 04 2020, @08:22AM
In fact putting it at a golden ratio instead of the center on the vertical axis might help further.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @02:57PM (2 children)
All you need to do to correct this problem is move the camera (+screen) slightly further away. The television industry has been doing this for the better part of a century since the invention of the teleprompter, which is always located offset from the camera.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday September 06 2020, @01:53PM
Yeah, they also tend to place it so that the other eye is straight to the camera when the dominant eye is on the prompter
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(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday September 06 2020, @04:47PM
The teleprompters I am familiar with have a semi-transparent sheet of glass at a 45 degree angle to the line of sight between the camera and the person reading it, onto which the text is projected, so the camera 'looks through' the sheet of glass. The trouble is, it is still completely obvious that the person is looking at the text and not the camera, as the gaze is focussed on the text, not the camera, and the movement of the eyes reading the text is a dead giveaway.
Its a bit like jpeg and mpeg artifacts - once you know what you are looking for, you see it all the time.
Good performers know to look/focus behind the camera when performing to camera, so the end result is perceived as natural by the viewer. People who look at the camera have their focus on the plane of the image collector, which is reproduced on the image, so people look as if they are focussing at the plane of the (TV) screen in front of you - in other words, somewhat in front of you, rather than at you. It's a subtle point, but once you know what you are looking for, horribly obvious.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 04 2020, @02:53PM
Product != tech. Read your link.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @05:33AM (3 children)
I'll bet the customer is government. Please, put cameras on devices that people won't tape over. That they won't put lens caps or other blockers on.
And now, make it sound like a good thing! Yes, make our targets think you're doing them a favour, so they'll embrace it!
Oh, and maybe we'll have enough juice under the hood that the spyware we add will feel less onerous? Can we do that?
Yeees, that's a good little collaborator. Here, have some belly rubs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @07:03AM (1 child)
I would think that if a nefarious agent were behind this, that they would have kept it secret, so that no-one would suspect that the video display doubled as a camera to spy on them.
Releasing this as a new feature on a phone sort of ruins the possibility of sneaking it into other models. Now folks will be looking for it.
Of course now we will need shades to cover all our phone displays - it's the only way to be sure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Friday September 04 2020, @08:26AM
Good thinking but hiding in plain sight is the only long term viable option. Nobody can leak what is already out there.
Sooner or later one repairman would notice strange circuitry. So they simply advertise the feature. Same as publishing the patents for coronaviruses, in fact.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @08:35PM
exactly. this is all about hiding the fucking spy device and protecting it from user freedom. fuck the scum phone companies and the dumb whores who rent the latest one they can get irrespective of how hostile the whole situation is.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday September 04 2020, @06:03AM (3 children)
"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Xiaomi's new Abyss. Have a look.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday September 04 2020, @07:12AM (2 children)
"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Very deep. Soundd like the gynecologist motto.
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(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday September 04 2020, @09:52AM
It sounds like Nietzsche [reddit.com].
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 04 2020, @05:35PM
Only in the later stages of birth.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @06:44AM (4 children)
Customers don't want this, or at least don't care about this, but these are what companies are offering. The small amount of space for a speaker and camera at the top of the phone and a few buttons on the bottom wasn't a problem. I suppose this is better than having notches on the screen. But I rather liked my old Galaxy Note 4, which had a battery I could replace and an LED on the front that would flash to notify me I had messages or missed calls. I never once recall thinking it was a problem that I had a small amount of buttons at the bottom of the phone and a speaker and LED at the top.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Friday September 04 2020, @07:15AM (1 child)
I guess not even their marketing dept realized that saving space and design are secondary advantages than putting a cam in the center of the screen you are using for videoconferencing. Some engineer should unglue from the videogame and tell em.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @07:23AM
It doesn't matter if you see a grey square above someone's head in a Zoom call.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday September 04 2020, @01:40PM
Yeah, a few buttons and a speaker grill give a device a bit of character. A plain, wafer-thin, rounded cuboid that looks like little more than a disembodied screen is dull as fuck, and these trends mean all smartphones look the same. Then there's the appalling ergonomics.
I fully agree with the other point about this design making it much more inconvenient for users to tape over their camera as well.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 04 2020, @08:22PM
People want smaller phones, not larger ones that don't fit in their pocket or hand (esp. for small-handed people (i.e. women)). But they also want larger screens, for the same reason they want larger screens on their computers and TVs. So while you may have been happy with wasting space on buttons and speakers and cameras, a lot of other people are not, and they're buying new phones. People like you generally don't buy the latest phones and stick with something for a long time, so your preferences don't drive design.
I miss the replaceable battery too (my latest phone was the first one to not have a replaceable battery), but the LED is unnecessary: an OLED screen can just show your your notifications right on the screen even when it's "off". Mine shows a clock, battery level, and notification icons all the time. With the old LCD screens, this took too much power because you had to keep a backlight on, but with an OLED screen you just keep the whole screen dark except for a few pixels you want to light up at low brightness to show some tiny icons, and the power consumption is tiny. My previous phone (LG V20) had a 2nd, very small, LCD screen to show this stuff and some other info, but they ditched it in this model because they switched finally to an OLED panel, and the overall phone size is noticeably smaller even though the main screen is the same size, if not slightly larger. However, this model has a "notch" in the screen with the cameras, and it would be nice not to have that. It's not like I take many photos with the front-facing cameras anyway, so I'm not that worried about their image quality looking as good as the rear-facing cameras.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @07:01AM (7 children)
"Innovations" like these are what you do to differentiate your product from the competition when all products are basically identical.
Camera notches, this behind the screen camera, etc., are the 21st century equivalent of tail fins on a car: attention getters that are completely unnecessary and that, if anything, very marginally harm product performance.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday September 04 2020, @01:43PM (3 children)
Bad analogy in one way though because the tail fins are a huge visual cue whereas this behind-screen camera presumably won't be seen at all which will just make the phone look featureless and bland. I suppose the nearest car analogy would be a de-chromed, de-bumpered custom with shaved door handles. The difference is that those old cars had a lot of design flair just in their body shape. These phones don't, they're all just flat rounded cuboids.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @02:40PM (1 child)
"... they're all just flat rounded cuboids"
Just like all today's cars are bubble-rectangleoids with rounded corners!
I just found a BETTER CAR ANALOGY!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 04 2020, @05:36PM
Apple has a design patent on rectangles with rounded corners.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @05:45PM
Add a slammed suspension and forklift tires and it's referred to as a "boom-hoopty".
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 04 2020, @08:25PM (2 children)
How do notches hurt performance? They just blend into the screen; full-screen apps don't use that extra space (on either side of the notch), so you're not missing anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @10:22PM (1 child)
Apple talks a lot about elegance, simplicity, and clean design.
I find the notch to be a violation of all those. I suppose it's more an aesthetic defect (irregularity) to me than anything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @10:32PM
Here's one way the notch asymmetry doesn't help: on phones without the notch, it is completely immaterial which way I hold my phone. I grab it with the power socket on the left or on the right, and the display is identical. Small thing, but I really like that feature.