Punch-hole cameras will be a big thing after Samsung finally makes the Galaxy S10 series official next month. It’s next step in the evolution of the notch, and while it is a lot less obtrusive than the notch, it isn’t completely invisible. Hence, manufacturers like Huawei have sought to make it as small as possible with the Honor View20 having the smallest one yet. However, it seems Oppo has other ideas in mind, according to a design patent uncovered by LetsGoDigital over the weekend.
As per the report, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) passed two patents for Oppo that described how the company will be camouflaging the punch-hole front camera, and it really seems interesting. The patent shows that Oppo will actually display a camera app on the area around the punch-hole which will be visible all the time effectively hiding the real lens inside the app. This is a clever idea to completely obscure the hole. Also, a swipe on the camera will reveal more apps and it will be sort of a quick access tray for applications. While this does hide the camera hole very well, it raises questions about the ease of use of the implementation as the icon on the topmost corner would not be easy to reach.
Samsung is expected to take another approach to the punch-hole making it a secondary display, suggest reports. This secondary display will show useful information, widgets, and icons. Huawei and even Samsung have previously resorted to using wallpapers to cleverly hide the area of the punch hole from the eyes of the user. It’s not known when we will see Oppo’s solution as the company is yet to debut any device with a punch-hole design. However, we could see it coming soon in the upcoming weeks.
Watch: Oppo Find X First Look
Oppo showed off its ground-breaking 10x optical lossless zoom and on-screen fingerprint reader technology recently in China. It has also promised a live demo of the new tech at MWC 2019 next month. It is possible that we could see a flagship prototype with the above mentioned patent implemented at the show.
