Before the Samsung Galaxy Note 20, many Samsung flagships have been initially rumoured to arrive with an under-screen selfie camera. Allowing for a flawless edge-to-edge display with no flimsy pop-up cameras or other wacky solutions, the under-screen camera (or USC) has been one of phone fans most-anticipated features for a while.
The Samsung Galaxy S20 (then called the S11) was rumoured to come with the feature after Oppo unveiled the first under-screen camera in Shanghai last year, but of course, the S20 arrived without one. But a new preview image from Samsung, spotted by a well-known news outlet, could indicate the feature is finally coming to the Note 20.
OPPO's brand new solution for full-screen display - Under-screen Camera (USC) has just been unveiled here at #MWC19 Shanghai! #MoreThanTheSeen pic.twitter.com/k5qEQ3QNtaJune 26, 2019
News outlet SamMobile has spotted a teaser image in the Samsung Galaxy Store's "Samsung Rewards" page, as the featured image for the $1 Spot Themes section.
Sandwiched between the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is a new handset with a lack of button configuration on the right-hand edge of the device, which eagle-eyed fans have ID'd as an early look at the Note 20. Check out the image below:
Interesting, isn't it? The Note 20 looks rather like the Note 10, with a few slight differences. There's no physical buttons on the right-hand-side and no Infinity-O display with a punch-hole camera.
Rather, it looks like the Note 20 is skewing closer to that 100% screen look that's been much sought-after by smartphone manufacturers in recent years. It's doing this in the image shown here by finally incorporating an under-screen selfie camera into the display.
Other phones in the Samsung range, such as the Galaxy A80, have experimented with flip-out and pop-up cameras before, but if the image proves accurate, this will be groundbreaking for Samsung and every other phone in the industry.
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Rival companies like Apple have struggled to lose the "notch" in its display that houses all the depth sensors used in its FaceID facial recognition technology, so to maintain the camera's quality and keep an uninterrupted display would be a real feather in Samsung's cap.
However, let's not go crazy over this: Samsung may just have placed a dummy render or mock-up in the picture as a placeholder, which explains the absence of details. We could be reading more into this than is meant by the image.
We'll know more for sure as the Note 20's purported July release date looms closer. Stay tuned.
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Matt Evans now works for T3.com sister brand TechRadar, covering all things relating to fitness and wellness. He came to T3.com as staff writer before moving on, and was previously on Men's Health, and slightly counterintuitively, a website devoted to the consumption of Scotch whiskey. In his free time, he could often be found with his nose in a book until he discovered the Kindle.