Huawei may release a smartphone with an under-display camera and virtual buttons sooner than you think. The company has patented one such smartphone design in China, and the sketches are available in the gallery below.
Now, Huawei already included virtual buttons in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro. To be more precise, the volume up and down buttons were activated by double-tapping on the phone’s side.
That feature worked pretty well, to be quite honest, mostly because the phone’s display is heavily curved. Well, Huawei has a somewhat similar idea this time around.
These sketches show a Huawei smartphone with under-display camera and virtual buttons
If you take a look at the provided sketches, you’ll see one rather interesting smartphone design. As you can see, this device has extremely thin bezels, and its display is heavily curved, but only in some places.
Where the power / lock button and volume rocker buttons usually lie, you’ll see a large cutout for the side display. In other places, you’ll see the phone’s body (probably glass-made), in order to avoid accidental touches.
This is a rather interesting approach by Huawei. Those cutouts are clearly there for virtual buttons, which would probably be activated in a similar fashion to the volume buttons on the Mate 30 Pro.
You’ll also notice that this phone doesn’t have a display camera hole or notch. Well, that’s because it’s meant to include an under-display camera, in addition to those buttons.
It was recently reported that Huawei may be the first smartphone OEM to get its hands on Visionox’s under-display camera technology. As a reminder, Visionox recently said that it’s ready to mass-produce its displays with under-display cameras.
Huawei may release a phone with such tech by the end of this year, or in early 2021
If Huawei manages to get its hands on it soon, we may as well see its smartphone with an under-display camera by the end of 2020 or in early 2021.
Some of you may think that device will be the Huawei Mate 40 or 40 Pro, but that’s highly unlikely. That device will launch in September, and that’s too early for this tech to be included.
If we had to guess, we’d say that the Huawei Mate 40 & 40 Pro design has been finalized already. So, if Huawei intends to release a phone with an under-display camera in 2020 or early 2021, it’ll be a part of a different lineup.
All in all, this design is extremely interesting, not only does it include an under-display camera, but also virtual buttons. Under-display cameras may kill off display notches and holes completely, at some point.
