OPPO patents a phone with a waterfall display and an under-display selfie camera

A new leak suggests OPPO has a particularly premium kind of smartphone display in the works. Not only does it have an under-display front-facing camera, but it combines this probably-impending flagship trend with what is often known as a "waterfall" panel.

According to a patent approved by the Chinese intellectual property office CNIPA today (October 9, 2020), OPPO has designed phones that show the "new" type of selfie camera within displays with varying degrees of extreme curvature, to the extent that they virtually take over the long edges of the devices' frames in some cases.

OPPO has made a flagship with a waterfall-style display in the past. However, that phone (the Find X) had curved corners as well, whereas this new patent depicts much more squared-off devices. This results in the impression that the OEM has set out to make something like the Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha, albeit with a conventional rear panel.

The new claimed designs have led to speculation that they may come to fruition in the successors to the Find X2 series. However, there is no other evidence to date that those putative 2021 phones may turn out looking anything like this new patent.