Hours after Oppo hinted in a video that it prepares a terminal with a front camera under the screen, Xiaomi has done the same on social networks. The president of Xiaomi, Lin Bin, has published a video on his official Weibo account (which was later republished on Twitter) of the Xiaomi Mi 9 with a front sensor completely hidden under the phone screen. This means that the new version of the terminal will not need a notch, hole or retractable camera in its OLED panel.
It is not entirely clear how Xiaomi's new technology will work. Some sources point out that Xiaomi registered a patent in November 2018 in which the use of a double front camera located under the screen of the device is specified. Specifically, as detailed in the new patent, for this novel technology to become a reality, two special cameras would be used, one of them a photosensitive type, which in turn would transmit the information captured to a second sensor that would be responsible for carry out the capture.
In this way, an all-screen terminal would be achieved, without notches and without any type of retractable system. This could take full advantage of the entire front to house the panel, since both the secondary cameras and the fingerprint reader would be just below. What is not at all clear is when this system could become a reality, that is, when it would begin to be applied to new devices. It is something that today we do not know, although we think that it would not take too long to see it. In any case, it must be borne in mind that as with each new technology, it is possible that initially the same results will not be obtained as with normal cameras. Typically, initially there is some loss in optical quality.
Neither Oppo nor Xiaomi would be the first companies to be working on this under-screen front camera system. Vivo, the main rival of Oppo and Xiaomi in China, could also be preparing something similar, as was hinted at at the last APEX 2019 in March.
