Samsung's New Under-Display Webcams To Enable Ultra-Slim Bezel OLED Display Laptops
In an effort to facilitate even skinnier laptop design and blanket the laptop market with OLED screens, Samsung Display is getting ready to introduce new OLED panel for notebooks that are thinner than any US coin, be it a quarter, nickel, dime, penny, or anything else. Samsung is calling it the "Blade Bezel," and to achieve the extreme thinness, the company moved the webcam underneath the display.
We don't mean the webcam sits at the bottom of the display, as Dell experimented with on some of its previous laptops, like the XPS 13 9370 in 2018—we were never big fans of that placement, because nobody needs a clear view of our nostrils (and fortunately Dell went back to putting the webcam up top). Instead, Samsung is touting an Under Display Camera (UPC) technology, whereby the webcam is embedded into the display, behind the screen.
This is not an entirely new concept—ZTE laid claim to launching the first "mass produced" 5G smartphone with an under-display camera last year, the Axon 20 5G. The general consensus is that it produces okay selfies, but pales in comparison to phones with traditional selfie cameras.
Will the image quality be better on laptops sporting Samsung's Blade Bezel display? That remains to be seen (literally). While the concept itself is not new, we are not aware of any laptops that sport under-display cameras, so Samsung is trekking into new territory, in that regard.
It's not solely about the quality of the "invisible camera hole," though. Samsung is also touting an ultra-slim bezel and a high screen-to-body ratio of 93 percent, compared to 85 percent on what Samsung says are conventional displays. The end result is a laptop that is up to 50 percent thinner than conventional models.
The OLED screen itself measures a scant 1mm. According to Samsung, traditional displays measure 2.1mm. To put those values into perspective, a US copper penny measures 1.35mm. Samsung says its Blade Bezel screens are up to 30 percent lighter too—130 grams versus 180 grams.
Samsung's screen is certainly intriguing, and we're looking forward to spending some hands time with it once the display finds its way onto actual laptops.
