Galaxy Fold 2 Could Feature World's First Under-Display Camera

Simply based on rumors, the Galaxy Fold 2 could be the most ambitious phone to come to the market. Either that or it will eclipse its predecessor as Samsung's biggest embarrassment. Samsung is seemingly putting some of the most novel and most experimental features ever known in the industry, not even including the foldable screen itself. The latest word is that Samsung's next foldable phone will be its and the industry's first phone to have a camera under an unbroken and hole-free screen.

Samsung is calling the technology UDC, short for "under-display camera". The basic idea is that, unlike the punch hole cutout on the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10, the whole will be completely invisible while the screen is in use.

The machine used for manufacturing such displays is called the Hole in Active Area or HiAA. Samsung already has one, the HiAA1, that was used to produce the screens on this year's Samsung flagship phones. It just received the first HiAA2 equipment that will manufacture these UDC screens which, according to sources, will debut on next year's foldable phone.

That will make things even more complicated for an already complicated technology. Instead of the usual solid OLED screen, this UDC will have to lie under a flexible screen and that may affect the performance of the camera. Particularly, Samsung will have to address potential distortions and light bleeding that the foldable screen may have on the image sensor.

The screen itself, not to mention the software solutions, won't come cheap naturally. In addition to moving to a glass-like protective material, the Galaxy Fold 2 might have more expensive parts than its predecessor. Perhaps that will give Samsung more reason to shrink the device down to a clamshell form factor as well.