Before iPhone X’s notch deliberately being ripped off recently by all existing popular companies, the Essential phone was the pioneer by introducing smallest camera ‘notch’ on its flagship phone. However, after Apple following the same concept but with an added tech called Face ID, it’s now the trend of 2018, since Google has also implemented notch support for in its latest Android P Preview version released this week.
Essential had no intentions to embrace this notch, in fact, now it’s trying to ditch the notch by sticking the camera directly behind the display. Latest patents from the Andy Rubin’s company suggest that Essential is trying to integrate the camera the display panels directly without the need of a ‘notch’. Reportedly after a gradual start from the company into the smartphone world last year, if this patent comes to life, it might be a revolutionary jump to the upcoming smartphones in the future.
According to TechCrunch, “the patent describes a multi-layered display with camera in which a substantially transparent region allows light from outside to reach the camera to record an image. The patent points to a potential application in which the camera is mounted behind the LCD.”
The patent image shows the camera being placed in a standard spot of the phone, where the notch is supposed to be. We can also see the camera placed behind a screen’s layer, which apparently ‘records the light from the outside coloured by the colour filter layer’.
According to the report, another patent form “an irregularly shaped electronic display, including a hollowed out display within which a sensor, such as a camera, can be placed. The manufacturing techniques enable the creation of the hollow anytime during the manufacturing process. The resulting electronic display occupies the full side of the mobile device, with the sensors placed within and surrounded by the display.”
“The integrated camera serves two purposes: to record pictures,” the patent reads, “and to act as a camera icon, that when selected activates the camera. By removing the camera from the front side of the mobile device, or by integrating the camera into the display screen of the mobile device, the size of the mobile device display screen can be increased.”
The similar ditching of notch reports have surfaced online recently, the report stated that Apple is also planning to ditch its most controversial notch by using similar kind of display mechanism. Furthermore, Essential has a lot of patents registered on its name, which they chose to ignore them, like Huawei’s ‘pop-out’ camera keyboard and another similar mechanism, which was introduced in the Vivo’s Apex phone recently. However, the company did not respond to these newly surfaced patents yet.
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