ZTE Axon 30 With An Under-Display Camera Might Launch Soon

ZTE impressed the world when it announced it has the industry's first smartphone with an under-display camera or UDC. The ZTE Axon 20 5G, unfortunately, didn't impress reviewers when it came to that camera's actual performance. When the company announced the Axon 30 series last April with a traditional punch-hole cutout, most presumed ZTE has given up on the technology. It turns out it may have just been biding its time to show off the hard lessons it learned from last year's ZTE flagship.

UDCs are a sort of holy grail for smartphone makers, allowing them to push out almost all bezels without resorting to tricks like popup cameras or cutting out a part of the screen. The problem is that manufacturers will have to balance screen quality and allow light to pass through to the camera underneath. For its first attempt, the Axon 20 didn't perform well on both accounts based on reviews.

There was a very visible square area above the camera where the screen density was noticeably lower than the surrounding area. That may have been negligible compared to the disappointing quality of photos and videos that the front under-display camera produced. It was a brave first try, and it almost seemed as if ZTE went back to the drawing board.

A new report from Chinese media now claims that isn't the case and that the Axon 30, ZTE's latest flagship, will have a new variant with an improved UDC. The company's engineers have supposedly been able to figure out how to eliminate the effects of having an active screen area on top of the camera. In addition, the new module is said also to improve color reproduction, one of the biggest complaints about the ZTE Axon 20 5G's front-facing camera.

According to the report, ZTE will announce the UDC variant of the ZTE Axon 30 this July. It will definitely be interesting how much it has improved, if at all, but it remains unknown if the company will also launch it in global markets just like it did the other Axon 30 models.