How come an off screen camera phone that has been playing for four years is no longer popular?

Off screen camera, not good enough

If Xiaolei remembers correctly, the first product in the industry to be equipped with off screen camera technology is the ZTE Axon20. It has redesigned the off screen front camera and the corresponding pixel arrangement of sensitivity, making the original pixel position blank and transparent, allowing external light to be transmitted to the front camera, making the front camera usable. This is actually similar to the implementation principle of screen optical fingerprint, but the requirements for screen fingerprint are much lower.

But this will also result in a significant decrease in pixel density in the area, which not only has a blurry appearance but also has much lower brightness than other areas. This will cause a particularly noticeable circle to appear in the camera area below the screen, which has a very poor appearance. In addition, the selfie effect of Dreamback ten years ago can be said to be like picking up sesame seeds and throwing watermelons.

(Image source: Produced by Lei Technology)

Moreover, the light transmittance in this area is far from what we imagined. According to professional testing, the light transmittance in the underscreen camera area may only be between 20% -30%, while the light transmittance in the front camera area of mainstream phones is over 90%, which is a very significant difference. Even in an environment with excellent lighting, the selfie effect of the off screen camera is very impressive.

Although ZTE and Xiaomi have put in a lot of effort to solve this problem by introducing various noise reduction and beauty algorithms, attempting to make the selfie effect of the off screen camera usable, it is only usable and cannot meet the needs of users at all.

Lei Technology has previously tested the selfie effect of several off screen camera phones, and the results were disappointing. The selfie effect of each model can be described in three words: "paste", "paste", and "paste".In backlit scenes, there may even be a unique "blurring and blurring" feeling, filling the artistic atmosphere.

More importantly, with the increasing screen resolution of mobile phones nowadays (many thousand yuan devices have already used 1.5K or even 2K resolution screens), the low resolution off screen camera area will become more prominent.

It can be said that nowadays, the design of off screen cameras not only brings a little impact to users in terms of appearance, but also has all the other drawbacks. For consumers who pursue practicality, there are almost no off screen camera phones worth buying today.Don't blame Xiaolei for throwing cold water, these problems are limited by physical laws, and it is difficult to further break through based on current technology.