Under-Display Camera

When you stand behind a thin lace curtain, you can still see the outside world through tiny gaps in the fabric, even if it looks a bit soft. An under-display camera works on a very similar principle, capturing light that filters straight through the screen. The display area sitting directly over the lens is built to let light pass through. Depending on the device, the screen may even momentarily shut off those pixels the instant you take a photo to keep display light from leaking into the shot.

The real secret behind this magic is transparent display materials and a sparser pixel layout. Right above the camera lens, engineers space out the pixels—the screen's tiny light-emitting dots—a bit wider and replace standard electrical wiring with see-through materials. This opens up microscopic pathways that let external light travel straight through.

As a result, light reaches the camera sensor without punching a physical hole into the glass. When watching videos or playing games, you get to enjoy a completely seamless, uninterrupted full-screen experience free from distracting black cutouts.

Tucking a camera beneath a screen is no simple feat. Because multiple physical layers of the display panel sit directly above the lens, significantly less light reaches the sensor compared to a standard front-facing camera.

When light is scarce, photos turn out dark and noisy. Worse, as light forces its way through the microscopic gaps between pixels, it scatters and diffracts in every direction. This creates noticeable glare, haze, and a foggy veil over the image. The drop in image quality is especially glaring in low light or at night.

Yet, you cannot simply remove more pixels above the camera to let in extra light. Doing so lowers the screen resolution in that exact spot, leaving an obvious grid pattern that looks like a patch of window screen mesh. Device makers face a delicate balancing dilemma: keeping the screen flawless while letting enough light into the camera.

To be precise, modern under-display cameras don't rely solely on hardware optics. Once light passes through the screen's dense maze of pixels and wiring, it bends, weakens, and scatters—damage that physical lenses simply cannot undo on their own.

The secret weapon filling this gap is AI-powered image restoration. The split second you snap a picture, the phone's image signal processor and dedicated AI chip spring into action. They calculate and remove the haze caused by light scatter, clean up digital noise, and sharpen edges softened by the screen layers.

At the same time, machine learning models trained on vast photo datasets restore lost colors and fine textures in real time. Thanks to newer transparent panel materials and sophisticated AI enhancement algorithms, image quality continues to climb. Still, because it has not fully caught up to conventional selfie cameras, some smartphone makers have opted to stick with punch-hole cutouts for now.