The race for the fastest-charging phone may have ended with Xiaomi taking the top slot, but the battle for the first under-screen camera phone has begun just now. ZTE president Ni Fei made a surprise announcement that his company would be showing off the world's first under-screen camera smartphone.
Ni Fei took to Weibo to make the announcement though he did not mention specific dates by which we could have our first look at the smartphone. In fact, there wasn't even an indication of how soon it could be.
ZTE’s sudden announcement comes as a surprise because the big players like Oppo and Huawei have reportedly delayed their under-screen camera smartphone to 2021. However, reports say that ZTE will be using a Visionox solution that was just demonstrated a couple of months ago. The Visionox solution is also ready for mass-production.
- Xiaomi patents an under-display camera smartphone
- Oppo’s invisible ‘under display’ camera just made notches and cutouts irrelevant
On the other hand, there’s another unlikely candidate that could trump ZTE. And it’s not from China. Vsmart, a Vietnamese smartphone brand also announced that it will be releasing an under-display camera smartphone soon. Vsmart, which is owned by Vingroup, showed off a prototype a couple of months ago, though not officially. It is also unclear if the under-display solution is their own or from Visionox, as some have pointed out.
What’s worth noting is that neither ZTE nor Vsmart have revealed any dates as of yet for the release of their respective products. What’s more, we don’t know if they simply wish to demonstrate their phones or actually make retail products that will be available to consumers.
As far as Oppo is concerned, the company has already said that it does not expect to launch a phone with the technology until 2021. And that is because the technology is not perfected yet and Oppo doesn’t want to give a sub-par flagship product to the consumers.
So, the fight seems to between two very unlikely competitors - ZTE and Vsmart. This will be a first generation product from Visionox, and as such, we expect it to be not perfect. Moreover, neither of these two brands are likely to ship their products outside of their respective countries.
Although ZTE does sell the Axon series in the US, it won't be doing so in the future. It is believed that the ZTE Axon 20 5G will be the phone to feature the under-screen camera
