Rumor | Upcoming Galaxy S21 could be Samsung's first handheld sporting an under-display selfie cam

Trusted leaker Ice Universe revealed that Samsung could finally ditch the punch-hole selfie cameras and replace them with under-display models starting with next year’s Galaxy S-series. For now, Samsung is pondering the feasibility of the whole endeavor, but we have already seen early prototypes and patents from a few Chinese phone makers, so the Korean giant is certainly not the only one looking to innovate.

Other alternatives for a full display implementation include cameras that pop up from the upper edge or rear cameras that can rotate to face the user, but these solutions are not really that popular, plus they are prone to mechanical failures. Oppo unveiled a few in-display camera prototypes in early and late 2019, yet we haven’t seen any commercial implementation for these up until now. The prototypes presented last December still had luminosity issues as the OLED panel on top was not letting enough light to pass through. Nevertheless, the selfie cam image samples were not bad at all, and Oppo may actually market these solutions some time this year, beating Samsung by several months.

Meanwhile, Apple’s 2020 iPhones are still expected to integrate a notch, and we have to wonder if Apple will ever present any truly revolutionary tech before the Eastern-Asian phone makers.