The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra’s under-display camera gets the display part right

To grossly oversimplify it, there are two challenges behind making an under-display camera, one of which is to hide the camera under the screen. The "hide the camera" part of the challenge has been accomplished by the third-gen UDC on the Axon 40 Ultra. Since its first attempt, the company has come a long way in regards to taking good photos.

This camera is located under a 6.8-inch 2480 x 1116 panel. There are three cameras on the back of the phone. The most intriguing feature of the phone is the selfie camera, but I won't be covering that or anything else about it.

If you want a more nuanced explanation of under-display camera technology and why it is difficult to develop, you should watch Sam Byford's video. Even for a work in progress, this accomplishment is impressive. The technology hiding the camera under the display has improved. According to the press release, the screen area over the camera is integrated with the rest of the screen more smoothly in this iteration. The UDC's part of the screen needs to be synchronized with the rest of the display.

You don't need to know anything to know that ZTE has worked well here. Almost all of the time, the selfies camera disappears into the screen. During the time I was setting up the phone, I forgot about the punch-hole and notch concept. Most of the time I used it, it was just a screen. You can't say that about the under-screen camera, which is always there.

I can see the camera when I use my phone. In bright light, the lens is visible, but it isn't making a difference. If I turn the screen brightness down, I can see it a bit better, but I still have to look for it. It is very difficult to spot even with white screens. The job was done by the engineers of the company.

The camera side of the UDC has seen some image processing improvements, and in some situations, the results look good enough to be a standard selfies. There are artifacts that you can see if you look closely, and in some bright outdoor shots, there is a little bit of color bleeding between my skin and the black shirt I'm wearing.

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It's difficult for the camera to see back lighting. Flare and a grid pattern can be seen across the image when the sun hits the camera directly. It just can't contend with direct sunlight and relies on image processing to sharpen selfies and clean up some of the bloom you can see in the live preview. The phone can't process video in real-time, so clips look soft even in good lighting.

In good lighting, selfies indoors look softer than selfies from a traditional front-facing camera. It's an improvement. It's difficult to solve a light source with a grid pattern in software. The on-screen flash is not very flattering in low light conditions.

There is still a noticeable difference in image quality between the standard camera and the one on the Pixel 6 pro. I don't think most people would notice a drop in image quality if there was no light source behind the subject or sunlight on the lens. The display piece of the puzzle has been solved, which may mean that the UDC tech is close to being good enough for most people.

Is it true that most people don't like the holes on their phone displays? Is it possible that we have trained our brains to ignore them when we look at our phones? The best-case scenario is that an under- display camera disappears. Most of us are so used to the selfies that we have made them disappear from our attention as well. We just stop looking at them after a while. I don't think the problem they're solving is one that will bother many people.

The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is currently on sale in China for 4998 and will be available in North America on June 21st.

Allison Johnson is a photographer.