It seems that after many attempts taken by smartphone manufacturers to hide the selfie camera from sticking out, Chinese phonemaker Oppo has finally found a solution. In its recent patent filing, Oppo has suggested that it will be masking the camera hole in the display with an icon. Seen to be the camera app icon (from Oppo’s patent images), the icon will stay in its place while a swipe on the display will see only other icons moving.
In recent times, smartphone manufacturers have been wracking their brains to ensure that the selfie camera stays hidden for they want to make use of the phone’s size to maximise screen size, including reducing the bezel. The patent images show that the punch hole camera will be hidden by placing the camera app icon in such a way that the camera hole forms a part of the icon, even showing the lens arrangement in real-time.
However, there seems to be a flaw as the implementation works for as long as the user stays in the homescreen. If for instance a user decides to watch a video or browse social media apps (which they will), the camera hole will be visible. Oppo had already tried the full motorised camera housing method on the Find X in its aim to cover the selfie camera from sight.
Sister company Vivo is rumoured to bring the pop-up camera mechanism to its mainstream V series smartphones as it went for a pop-up camera on the Nex and a dual-display setup for the Nex Dual Display. Vivo even got rid of the selfie camera in the Apex 2019 concept, to achieve a perfect fullscreen display. OnePlus is rumoured to go for the slider display technology for the next-gen OnePlus 7, while Xiaomi and Huawei have gone for the same already. Samsung is said to be trying, literally, to hide the camera underneath the display. Manufacturers state that as experienced earlier with smartphones such as Samsung Galaxy A8, the selfie camera can gather much attention as well as occupying space in the notification bar.