What if we ‘hide’ the front camera… in the frame of the screen itself? This is what a patent filed by OnePlus with the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) proposes.
LetsGoDigital spotted the patent with 23-pages describes a hypothetical OnePlus phone with its front camera covered inside the top bezel of the screen.
The system imagines a method by which the manufacturer would hide the camera in the upper frame of the screen, but in this case camouflaging the change with a “transparent cover plate”, wanting to avoid a significant visual impact.
The idea behind this patent seems difficult to come by; that the front camera is hidden in an upper edge, making a hole in it. This “transparent cover plate” would allow to maintain the screen ratio that the devices currently handle, but without compromising the panel. The hole, therefore, would affect the edge and not the screen.
The patent further explains that this system has a “high screen-to-body ratio, low production cost, high performance and high product reliability.”
Under-screen camera technology isn’t new either. It has not been actively brought to the consumer market except with one device, the ZTE Axon 20 5G, showing its main problems. And it is that although it is possible to mount a camera under the screen to hide it, the image quality is seriously compromised, resulting in a very poor photographic performance.