This time last year (before most of us had even heard of COVID-19) we all thought that 2020 was going to be the year of the under-display camera. Several manufacturers had already shown it off in person with many more working on solutions to some problems it still encountered. Well, COVID-19 has laid bare many of these plans by manufacturers but it looks like 2020 could still be the year of the under-display camera.
ZTE have today officially announced their Axon 20 5G, complete with under-display selfie camera and an in-display fingerprint sensor for a total “notch-free experience”.
Aside from the first commercially available under display camera the phone packs decent specs (while not being top of the range). The display that everything sits underneath is a 6.92-inch FHD+ OLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate and is powered by the mid-range Snapdragon 765G, 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of onboard storage.
That front selfie camera is a whopping 32MP while the rear camera boasts a quad lens setup including a 64MP main lens, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, a 2MP depth lens and a 2MP macro lens. The phone’s 4,200mAh battery is charged using Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0 — capable of charging at 30W.
For some reason the phone ships with just Android 10 which is disappointing given its is a ground breaking device. In the end it will be interesting to see just how the under-display camera functions and sidesteps the artefacts that were present in earlier iterations of the technology.
ZTE have announced that the Axon 20 5G will be available internationally starting on December 21 but whether this includes Australia is yet to be determined — you can be sure we will be chasing that down in the coming days. At this stage Australia is not listed in the list of available countries but fingers crossed it will be, eventually.
Whatever the case, the future is here and now. Under-display cameras may well now become a standard feature of smartphones — we hope so but hopefully not at the expense of image quality.
