Previously, on the engineering machine/concept machine, some manufacturers have realized black technologies such as full-screen fingerprint, 100W fast charging, and the amazing design of the whole body without holes. Once these technologies are mature and can be mass-produced, and the cost can be reduced to a suitable level, they will immediately appear on the manufacturers' new machines.
Now the full-screen design based on mechanical lifting initiative has been decentralized to the thousand yuan machine. A year ago, we couldn't imagine that this technology would be used in a large area so quickly, and even a thousand yuan machine could already use this design.
From the high-speed iteration of screen fingerprint, to the evolution of mobile phone screen form from Liu Haiping to water drop screen, perforated screen and now to true full screen, the development of smart phones in the past two years can be said to be quite rapid. The release time of the two products may be only half a year apart, but they both seem to be products with aberration for several years.
In the pursuit of true full screen, manufacturers have never stopped. The screen proportion of mobile phones has increased from more than 80% to more than 90%, and the shape of the screen has changed again and again.
At present, Meizu 16 series adopts perforated screen and full-screen with symmetrical upper and lower frames, which is a better scheme. The Meizu 16 series scheme is close to the ultimate full-screen scheme, but because the front camera is still placed on the upper frame, this design of Meizu 16 series has been difficult to further push up the screen ratio.
Other solutions will have some problems in one way or another, such as the water drop screen, which needs a gap in the horizontal center of the screen. Although this gap does not affect the daily use of mobile phones, it looks really unsightly.
Although most consumers can tolerate the existence of this gap, it is obvious that this is not the best solution for full screen. The reason why there is a gap in the screen is mainly because there is no room for the front camera, so it can only be placed in such a relatively compromise solution.
After the introduction of the mechanical lifting front camera, manufacturers have introduced many design schemes to hide or even cut off the front camera directly, which seems to open the door to a new world and realize the design of a true full screen in various ways.
For example, vivo NEX dual-screen version and Nubian X, they cut off the front camera, and by adding a screen on the back of the phone, the rear camera can have the function of the front camera. Another example is ASUS ZenFone 6, which uses a flip design to flip the rear camera over the phone as a front camera.
With the endless creativity of manufacturers, at least in the design of mobile phones, the Android camp has completely surpassed the iPhone.
Today, Android manufacturers have launched a new round of sprint for true full screen. This time, they have to challenge the realization of the off-screen camera, which is the most difficult and ultimate solution among all the solutions of real full screen.
Before the real full screen appeared, the design concept of off-screen camera was put forward, which was mainly based on the characteristics of organic light-emitting diodes. Organic light emitting diode (OLED) screen has the characteristics of ultra-thin and self-luminescence. It has no backlight layer and liquid crystal layer like LCD screen, and the pixels on the screen are actually composed of one organic light emitting diode after another.
Because there are gaps between pixels on the OLED screen, some light can actually penetrate the screen and reach the bottom of the screen when the OLED is not on. This feature provides a basic condition for the realization of the camera under the screen, and it is also the basis of the fingerprint under the optical screen.
At that time, due to technical limitations, manufacturers could not achieve such a design on the real machine. This is mainly because the optical characteristics of the screen at that time could not meet the requirements of the camera under the screen, including transmittance, reflectivity, refractive index and so on. In order to achieve a better off-screen photo effect, on the one hand, the factory should greatly improve and optimize the screen, on the other hand,
However, the research on screen fingerprint by manufacturers and suppliers at that time was not in vain, because in fact, screen fingerprint can also be regarded as an "off-screen camera", because the principle of optical screen fingerprint is that the screen shines light on the finger surface, and the sensor under the screen captures the light reflected by the finger to the bottom of the screen, thus obtaining the image information of the finger surface. After that, the system will automatically compare this image information with the previously entered fingerprint information for identification and judgment.
The "sensor" in the optical screen fingerprint module is actually a camera, even the latest screen fingerprint module in Ding Hui.
This means that the "off-screen camera" is actually a function that has been realized. What manufacturers need to do more is to optimize the screen itself to make its optical characteristics meet the requirements of off-screen initiative.
Today, Xiaomi and OPPO grab the technical demonstration of the camera under the screen. It seems that both companies have made some achievements in off-screen cameras. Both parties have released demonstration videos of relevant prototypes. Admittedly, off-screen orthography is no longer a dream.
Judging from the demonstration videos released by the two companies, the whole screen is seamless in the non-photographing state, and there is only one screen on the front of the whole mobile phone. At least in the video, we didn't notice the existence of the camera at all.
In the shooting state, the pixels at the top of the phone will go out and the front camera can work normally. We can't see the exact location of proactive from the video, but from the display on the screen, proactive can work normally under the screen and the effect is very good.
Xiaomi's demo video is similar to OPPO in effect, but the two manufacturers behind it use completely different solutions. More importantly, in the realization of off-screen camera, both parties have their own technology, not the solution provided by the supplier.
In the implementation of OPPO, the screen will be divided into two parts, one with high transmittance and the other with low transmittance, and the front camera will be placed under this part with high transmittance.
You may be curious, how does OPPO control the screen transmittance on a complete screen?
According to the patent published by OPPO, OPPO applies the technology of "microlens", which puts this very small and transparent lens in the gap of the screen of organic light-emitting diode, which improves the light transmittance of the screen and enables the image sensor to receive enough light for imaging.
It should be noted that although the forward-looking camera can image at this time, the image is not correct. Because light can only be emitted to the sensor through the gap between the pixels of the organic light emitting diode, there is an angle difference between the gap and the image sensor, so some light will be erroneously imaged on the image sensor.
This makes OPPO need to optimize the imaging error in this area through some later image processing algorithms and restore the correct results as much as possible. In this scheme, the later "reconstructing the image" is actually the real difficulty, because the imaging error is a physical problem, so we can only make up and eliminate this error as much as possible through the later algorithm, which is relatively difficult to realize.
Thanks to the powerful DSP in flagship machine, even if the algorithm is complicated, the mobile phone can handle the image well in the process of taking pictures.
Xiaomi's solution is completely different from OPPO's, and Xiaomi's solution is obviously simpler and ruder.
They directly improved the screen, changing the anode and cathode on the screen to be transparent. This change can improve the transmittance of the screen in a straight line and make it meet the needs of the camera under the screen. Because using cathode and anode with such high transmittance in the whole screen will greatly increase the manufacturing cost of the screen, Xiaomi's scheme, like OPPO, divides the screen into two parts: high and low transmittance.
They only applied such a "transparent screen" in the front area, and this part of the "transparent screen" is seamlessly connected with other ordinary organic light-emitting diodes.
In this solution, Xiaomi also reached an in-depth cooperation with the factory, realizing the customization of the entire "hidden screen".
So from today, the active technology under the screen is available, and now it depends on which manufacturer can take the lead in mass production and launch new products. The author personally predicts that OPPO and Xiaomi will launch related products by the end of this year at the earliest, and other manufacturers (such as vivo, Huawei and Samsung) may also announce new progress in this regard. Because each technology is patented and each solution is different, off-screen initiative can be said to be a new round of flowers blooming in the mobile phone industry.
I have to say that the R&D capabilities of domestic mobile phone manufacturers are indeed quite strong, and the iPhone has lost its advantage in front of these domestic mobile phones. Although you may say that these technologies are still in the Demo stage, but because manufacturers attach great importance to the off-screen active technology, its priority is even much higher than the full-screen fingerprint, so I personally think it will soon go to the mass production line.
Offscreen camera+screen fingerprint +5G can be said to be the most dreamy configuration in flagship machine in 2065438+the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2020.