Why is under-screen camera technology so difficult?
Under-screen camera technology may be the last hurdle of the full-screen era. This is the most imaginative part of the smartphone at this stage, after all, this ‘do not cut the panel, do not sacrifice the original space, to achieve a whole front screen, but also to retain the front camera’ design is very close to the ultimate form of cell phones.
Although the dream is beautiful, however, the road to mass production of under-screen cameras is not smooth. Since the first release of ZTE Axon20 under-screen camera technology last year, the head manufacturers still have not followed up with the release of related models, which shows that the under-screen camera technology is facing great challenges.
Today, Ni Fei, president of ZTE’s terminal division, explained why is under-screen camera technology so difficult?
Ni Fei pointed out that the greater the pixel density of the under-screen area, the better the display effect, but the stronger the blocking of light, affecting the front camera imaging, the balance between display and light transmission is a major problem.
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We know that the current screen PPI is about 400, and PPI at this level, the transmission rate of light in the camera is very low, which seriously affects the camera quality. If the PPI is lowered and the transmittance is increased, there will be a big gap between the PPI of the display area of the camera and the PPI of the whole screen, so there will be color blocks in the display area and other phenomena, so it is very difficult to realize mass production and commercialization of under-screen camera technology.
The good news is that after a series of research, ZTE has effectively solved this problem through four major aspects: pixels, chips, circuits, and materials. Ni Fei introduced that we have achieved a high pixel density of 400 PPI in the under-screen area! The under-screen camera area is integrated with the screen.
On the chip, ZTE uses the new independent UDC Pro screen display chip to drive the screen as a whole, the new intelligent pixel enhancement control, intelligent optimization of display control to do the coordination and unity of the display.
The circuitry transmits instructions to the pixels, allowing the screen in the under-screen camera area to display normally when not taking pictures and remain transparent when taking pictures. The multi-drive ACE circuit arrangement used this time, compared to the previous generation efficiency increased by 50%, making the transition between the two areas more natural.
Ni Fei emphasizes that the ZTE Axon 30 uses a special OLED and a more transparent cathode, high-transmission array in the under-screen camera area, using a screen that is more translucent and maximizes light transmission.
In terms of the under-screen camera sensor, ZTE Axon30 is equipped with a special selection of large pixel size front camera, a single-pixel size is 1.12um, four in one sensor can make a single-pixel light-sensitive area increased to four times the original, equivalent to 2.24um superpixel size effect, from the hardware to ensure the quality of imaging.
Through the collection of tens of thousands of groups of data, based on AI deep learning, selected a variety of typical scenes commonly used by users to conduct thousands of real scenes of real photography, continuous optimization, and finally realize the front camera Spiritual Transparency algorithm 2.0.
Spiritual Transparency Algorithm 2.0 makes the light pass through the screen, the sensor captures the picture information, and after multi-frame RAW data fusion, HDR reconstruction; then through neural network noise reduction, neural network de-fogging, anti-glare, fusion dual neural network image output, and through the system re-optimization, finally forming a clear photo.
With a larger pixel size front camera and upgraded Spiritual Transparency algorithm, the ZTE Axon30 under-screen camera quality will amaze you, let’s take a look at the camera sample shared by ZTE!
