Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Phone manufacturers are trying to figure out how to make their phones as much screen as possible, while still having a front facing camera, so they have either a notch, a slide-out camera, or a hole for the camera in the screen.

I propose they put that hole not in a corner, but in the middle of the screen, and position the remote person's face so that the pupil of one of their eyes is positioned exactly over the camera. That should give you the most natural interaction without distorting anything.

View on HN

They're already putting fingerprint scanners actually under the screen somehow (TIR?) - I doubt it'll be long before they figure out how to get a camera to look through a running screen while being invisible from the viewing side. Ultimate Big Brother tech right there.

Cameras are already being placed under the screen e.g. Xiaomi have implemented it and it probably won't be long before it's public.

I personally think it's too far, we should stick to bezels so we can have great hardware for cameras, speakers and screens.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/6/5/18654365/xi...

I agree, I think phone industrial design peaked with the iPhone 5S/SE, Nexus 5, and Pixel 1. I'd like that design forever please.

I would love to see a successor to my old, rubberized steel Motorola Milestone with keyboard, but with a larger screen and unlocked bootloader, please. All these modern phones are way too flimsy.

I agree that dedicated hardware is better, but then again I used to think standalone cameras were always going to be better than a phone camera and (while price-for-price it's still true) phone cameras are "good enough" and the best camera is the one you have with you.

I don't think that's a good idea. What about the majority of the phone's use when it's not showing someone's face? What about when the person moves their head and the whole frame has to pan?

Not to mention having a hole in your screen when you just want to watch a video. It's a ridiculous idea, but funny to think about.

More seriously, I'm wondering if at some point the front-facing camera may be an intrinsic part of the screen. I've read that on-screen fingerprint sensors already use a kind of camera in the screen. If that were to become good enough to see images at a distance, that might actually work.

Here’s the current state of cameras in screens.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/get-ready-for-under-...

Both Xiaomi and Oppo shared videos of the in-display cameras working, but the videos are too low quality to make any kind of image quality determinations.

That coupled with a lack of even controlled lighting, best case sample images probably tells a lot about the image quality.

Everyone would complain about the "dead pixel" in the middle of their screen.

When I last had to replace my phone, because it fell out of my pocket exiting my car, I received a new phone, not with a dead pixel, but an entire column of dead pixels. No visible damage, straight up just powered it on after openning the box. Immediately called my phone company to request a replacement and they wanted me to buy a new phone. Said fuck that, I paid full retail for the new phone amd its defective out of the box. Send me a new phone and a prepaid shipping bill for the return.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com