The front-facing camera has been a pretty constant bugbear for phone manufacturers for a few years now. Xiaomi is certainly not the first company to offer a clever technological solution to the problem – nor is it the only company to showcase the technology of under-screen cameras – but next year it aims to bring this technology to market.
The manufacturer took note of its plans today as part of its earnings report, stating that it will start manufacturing cell phones using the latest version of the technology it has been working on for several years. This is actually the third generation of the technology. The first didn’t exist outside of the lab and the second was shown to the public but never made it into production.
There are no doubt all kinds of practical reasons for this. Among them, the problem seems to be pixel density. For reasons that should be pretty obvious, the big question is how to maintain a uniform pixel density in the area of the screen that sits above the front-facing camera. However, Xiaomi claims to have solved the problem.
“The proprietary pixel arrangement used in Xiaomi’s 3rd generation sub-display camera technology enables the screen to direct light through the sub-pixel gap area so that each individual pixel can maintain a full RGB sub-pixel layout without compromising the pixel density. “It writes in a blog post.
According to Xiaomi, it has managed to effectively double the pixel density of the competing technology and let light into the camera without affecting the evenness of the screen. It looks fine in the side-by-side videos the company has released, but of course it’s worth keeping the verdict until mass production begins next year.