A Chinese smartphone company has figured out how to make a full-screen display without a notch or pop-up selfie camera

Oppo calls the smartphone technology "under-screen camera." Oppo/Twitter

• Oppo, a Chinese smartphone maker, revealed its new technology, called "under-screen camera" (USC), that lets a selfie camera hide underneath a display.
• The USC lets Oppo include a selfie camera on smartphones without using a notch design, like the iPhone XS and countless other Android devices, or a mechanized pop-up system like you'd find on the OnePlus 7 Pro and Asus Zenfone 6.
• The tech may come with compromises to selfie-camera quality, but Oppo hopes its software-based solutions will address some of the quality issues. 
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Oppo — a small smartphone company compared to the likes of Apple or Samsung — revealed its new technology that lets selfie cameras hide beneath a smartphone's screen.

The technology, which Oppo showed off at the MWC Shanghai event, means that the smartphone can include an all-screen front surface without a notch or an alternative mechanical system to hide the selfie camera, like the pop-up selfie cameras you'd find on the OnePlus 7 Pro or the Asus Zenfone 6.

Oppo's "under-screen camera" (USC) technology uses a custom material that's highly transparent to let light pass through to the lens, according to MacRumors. 

Oppo/Twitter

Oppo's technology hasn't been tested yet, so whether it comes with compromises to selfie-camera quality is still unknown.

Oppo said that the USC selfie camera might not match the quality of a traditional selfie camera, and it developed software-based solutions to deal with some of the issues a camera hidden under a display might face, like haze, glare, and color issues. 

So far, Oppo announced only the USC technology, not a smartphone that would actually come with an under-screen selfie camera. The company plans to unveil a device with USC technology, but it's not exactly clear when.