Samsung just showed off a major application of its under-screen camera technology and it is getting divided opinions at best in the press.
This comes on the heels of news just the other day where we told you about Apple’s patent for a “display window” to hide the camera notch on their future smartphones. While a complex option, and not one that looks like it is coming to market anytime soon, the window concept made sense.
Well, more sense than putting a camera under a screen.
But that’s not really the overarching theme of Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold 3 – that would be that the company’s notion that foldability will become a key feature to have in the future.
In many ways, the new Fold 3 is just an evolution of the Fold 2 but with enhanced performance such as the implementation of Gorilla Glass Victus for “80% stronger” screen, The Verge reports. Other specs include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 with 12GB of RAM. Storage options are a healthy 256GB and a mighty 512GB.
Optically speaking, the Fold 3 has three rear cameras (the f/1.8 wide, f/2.0 ultra-wide, and f/2.4). The 12MP sensor and aperture remain the same from the Fold 2 except with telelens having optical image stabilization and the cover screen camera stays 10MP. The notorious “hole punch” camera is also replaced with a 4MP camera under the screen that the company argues is more for “selfies” and productivity tasks like video conferencing than it is for taking photos, obviously. The phone will launch with a “Fold S Pen” accessory to better enable just such tasks.
Samsung also introduced the Flip 3, an old-school flip phone with similar performance to the Fold 3 but without the under-screen 4MP selfie camera. It also has 8GB of memory instead of the Fold’s 12GB and isn’t compatible with Samsung’s S Pen accessory.
The Fold and Flip 3 both start at $USD 999 and go up depending on options.
What is your opinion of under-screen cameras on smartphones? A bad replacement for the camera notch? Let us know your thoughts on this trend in phone camera design in the comments.
Check out some of our other photography news on Light Stalking at this link right here.
