Huawei patents show futuristic under-screen camera smartphones

Despite being banned in the US for yet another year, Huawei has been continuously releasing innovative smartphones, such as the foldable Huawei Mate Xs 5G.

New patents, discovered by LetsGoDigital, that were filed by Huawei on October 28th, 2019, now shed light on the Chinese giant's design plans for its upcoming smartphones.

Edge display, no side buttons

The unannounced smartphones shown in both patents feature displays that curve over the phones' sides, similarly to what we've seen on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, with no physical side buttons visible, likely to be replaced with tap and slide gestures.

There is, however, what appears to be a Power button on the top side of both smartphones, while the bottom side shows a standard USB Type-C port.

Under-screen selfie camera

The front of the devices is shown to be bezelless and with no notches of any kind, to hold the selfie camera, nor is there a visible mechanism for a pop-up camera. This strongly suggests that Huawei is planning to design this device with an under-screen camera, a technology we expect to see implemented in consumer smartphones by the end of this year.

We've already seen some Chinese companies show off under-screen camera prototype smartphones, with Oppo being the first to do so, while even prior to that, Xiaomi patents suggested that it too was in the works towards the new technology, but at the time it wasn't quite ready yet for consumer smartphones.

Circular and pill-shaped back camera modules

In the two Huawei patents, the only difference between the devices shown is how the back camera module is arranged.

The first patent shows a fairly average pill-shaped back camera module, similar in appearance to what we've seen on the Huawei P30 Pro, although in this case, the flash is inside of the module too, under the first two cameras and above what is likely a hybrid zoom camera.

In the second patent, there is a circular camera module instead, holding four sensors, like we've seen on the Huawei Mate 30 series.


Although the two patents show little difference, it's possible that they are for two entirely different models, and Huawei is planning to launch a variety of smartphones with under-screen selfie cameras, when the technology for it is good enough.

And while the majority of voters in our last year's poll weren't too keen on edge displays, which can be an occasional nuisance, causing accidental taps and being unreliable for gesture-based actions such as volume control, the Chinese company seems to think this is what the people want.