Get Ready For Under-Display Smartphone Cameras (arstechnica.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: With in-screen fingerprint readers quickly becoming a regular feature of flagship phones, manufacturers are starting to wonder about what other things they can stick under the display. In the past day, both Oppo and Xiaomi have taken to social media to show off the latest development: under-display front-facing cameras. Forget camera notches, hole punch displays, and complicated pop-up mechanisms; the under-display camera enables all-screen smartphone designs with no moving parts.
Under-display cameras will work a lot like optical under-display fingerprint readers -- a CMOS chip will be placed under a transparent section of the display, and it will peer through the pixels to see the outside world. For an optical fingerprint reader, the image capturing setup only needs to be of high enough quality to identify the ridges and valleys of your fingertip. For selfies and video chats, there will be much higher demands for image quality, and we wonder what obstructing the camera view with pixels will do to the image quality. Both Xiaomi and Oppo shared videos of the in-display cameras working, but the videos are too low quality to make any kind of image quality determinations. When you aren't taking a picture, the display pixels work normally, and when it's picture time, the pixels around the camera turn off, allowing the camera to see through the display. Xiaomi detailed some of its implementation, saying it was using a "special low-reflective glass" for better image quality.
Under-display cameras will work a lot like optical under-display fingerprint readers -- a CMOS chip will be placed under a transparent section of the display, and it will peer through the pixels to see the outside world. For an optical fingerprint reader, the image capturing setup only needs to be of high enough quality to identify the ridges and valleys of your fingertip. For selfies and video chats, there will be much higher demands for image quality, and we wonder what obstructing the camera view with pixels will do to the image quality. Both Xiaomi and Oppo shared videos of the in-display cameras working, but the videos are too low quality to make any kind of image quality determinations. When you aren't taking a picture, the display pixels work normally, and when it's picture time, the pixels around the camera turn off, allowing the camera to see through the display. Xiaomi detailed some of its implementation, saying it was using a "special low-reflective glass" for better image quality.
Best of all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Best of you can't put a sticker over the front facing camera anymore.
Personally I like the motorized pop-up cameras. I use the front facing one so little there is very little chance of it being damaged.
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If that is not possible, they do not really want to meet me in person.
Oh you sheltered man who has lived within 100km of your mother all your life.
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a) I don't use a selfie cam enough to care
and
b) I can see when an app calls for it. It kinds of weirds me out that so many apps have camera access on my phone.
Re:Best of all... (Score:5, Funny)
Best of you can't put a sticker over the front facing camera anymore.
Next thing, they'll be adding this to our telescreens - er... I mean TVs.
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Next thing, they'll be adding this to our telescreens - er... I mean TVs.
(Adjusts tinfoil hat...) Maybe the already are...
Stop picking your nose!
Alternative. (Score:2)
An alternative technology would be more effective for that. With camera-behind-screen it's both easily disabled and obtrusive. With camera-as-part-of-screen, with the backfeed in the DRM reverse channel, it's pretty close to impossible to defeat.
This was invented some time back: In addition to the illuminating pixels, the screen has photodiode pixels, with a mini-le
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Tough to put electrical tape over those... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's the the illusion of privacy. Just like a plethora of Facebook 'privacy settings' that claim to switch things on and off.
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Auditable OS is (Score:3)
You haven't been paying attention for the last few years. The chips have hard-coded spy hardware built right in, and have for several silicon generations.
The manufacturers actually promote it as a FEATURE. (It lets their IT departments remote-manage their company's machnes - even if they've totally trashed their OS or are turned off(!)) This thing can get to all the I/O and memory UNDER the OS, can do KVM monit
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it's being done because a bunch of idiots called tech writers (who actually know very little about tech other than how it looks and feels) have decided that bezel-less displays are cool. These are the same idiots who panned plastic bodies ("doesn't feel premium"), resulting in high-end phones having metal bodies (which dent when you drop them) sometimes with glass backs (yet another part which can shatter) which most people
Quality not the issue (Score:2)
Portable telescreens (Score:1)
Have you got something to hide?
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We all do. If we don't, we get arrested for public nudity.
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Alternatively:
Without the need to create separate connections, circuit boards and holes in the case, the "camera" can actually become a multi-lense device. One low quality camera in each corner. After taking a picture, the four will be combined in software (using the overpowered processor in today's phones) for a much higher quality or even 3D image. I could imagine the final product becoming much better than we have today, since all current camera's necessarily rely on one tiny lens.
Do any of our techni
Fucking useless (Score:1)
Turning off pixels on the screen around the camera, great. So that full-screen video chat app is now going to have a big circle or rectangle right in my incoming video, destroying what I see.
Fucking retarded is what this is.
Potential method to reduce pixel-sourced blur? (Score:3)
I wonder if a modification of the confocal approach could be applied to reduce the out of focus plane?
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3) Video calls (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What about no camera at all? (Score:5, Funny)
There are 2 "functions" of a front-facing camera:
1. Selfies. I think that the fad is over plus only a small amount of people do that.
I know it is stereotypical to say that people reading /. don't have girlfriends, but do you have any non-technical friends AT ALL? If by "small amount" you mean "majority of people on Earth", which after all is a small amount when considering the size of the universe, then I will agree with you.
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Girlfriends I understand, and they are also quite likely to be near you and not need video. I'm more interested in that people here don't seem to have mothers.
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smudge (Score:2)
The whole screen? (Score:3)
Then where do I put the Chiquita sticker to lock out the NSA, the Chinese and the Russians?
formula for the perfect phone (Score:1)
> manufacturers are starting to wonder about what other things they can stick under the display
seriously? well, actually not surprised. these clowns are talented at making shit noone want.
here's an idea for "stuff under the display", ya know, inside the friggin phone ...
NO front camera
headphone jack
external sdcard
dual SIM
replaceable battery
like we used to have for >$500+, back b4 ya lost your minds!
Come back when you have a real innovation (Score:2)
Just bought a new battery for my phone. I will keep it until it falls apart and no replacement parts can be found or someone comes up with a real innovation. For example, a battery which lasts under load for 24 hours. Other sensors, radar, night sight, smells, radioactivity, electric and magnetic field scanners, heat, unbreakability.
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About bloody time (Score:2)