ZTE Axon 40 Ultra takes another stab at the full-screen phone design
We might finally be close to reaching the point where there is little to no sacrifice needed just to hide that unavoidable selfie camera.
When we use our smartphones, 90% of the time, we spend it on the screen, either looking at it or touching it. The screen is still used by many people to capture the perfect shot, even when the camera on the smartphone has been disabled. It’s not surprising, then, that almost all smartphone users and manufacturers want the front of the device to really be all about the screen and only about the screen. Due to limitations in technology and manufacturing, however, that wasn’t the case until recently. Although there are many ways to get rid of any imperfections or holes on the phone, not all have been successful. ZTE isn’t giving up, however, as it continues to try and find the Under-Display Camera trick.
Designer: ZTE
There’s something almost disturbing about looking at a cutout or hole on your screen. Your mind will filter it out eventually and be blind to it. But every once in a while, it can draw our attention and distract. A lot of designers and engineers now want to wage war against those notches, but those didn’t exist until just a few years ago. It wasn’t really until smartphone makers tried to be smart and increase the space occupied by screens that they had to resort to cutouts.
Under-display cameras or UDCs are, to some extent, a solution to a problem of our own making. The best of both the worlds: a phone that has a large screen and a front-facing camera. Unfortunately, this was not possible until recent. Samsung is a well-known player in the market. However, it was disappointed to see that ZTE had already perfected UDC.
The newly announced ZTE Axon 40 Ultra, at first, looks almost like more of the same things, just with slight improvements that widen the brand’s lead in this department. The highlight is, of course, the fact that you can’t even see where the front camera is hiding underneath the screen, not unless you inspect it very closely. There is still some debate whether the output of that front-facing 16MP camera will be decent enough, but it definitely can’t do worse than what Samsung put underneath the Galaxy Z Fold 3’s flexible display.
The Axon 40 Ultra isn’t just a rehash of the past two years, though, but you might find its new design oddly familiar at the same time. It finally says goodbye to the flat screens of its predecessors and makes its 6. 8-inch AMOLED panel wrap to the sides with a gentle curve, meeting the equally curved edges of the back glass panel. The top and bottom edges, in contrast, are completely flat, so don’t be surprised if parallels to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra are drawn, especially considering the same suffix.
While the front of the phone is beautiful because of its clean and seamless surface, the same can’t be said of its back. With lots of space for labels, the camera bump appears larger than necessary. Curiously, ZTE takes it even further with a small “tab” that peeks out of that structure, an embellishment with no other purpose than the have yet another area for branding. Then again, that’s not surprising given today’s smartphone design trends, and, thankfully, we spend most of our time looking at the front of our phones rather than their backs.