In recent years, smartphone designs are becoming thinner. There is a new trend of slim, sexy hardware and now no one wants to buy heavy, bulky smartphones. Notches have been there for some time but with time, it also gotten slimmer and now manufactures are moving towards a full edge-to-edge design with no notches. So where are they going to place the front-camera on all these devices?

Over the last year, we seen display screens with less notches, holes, or pop-up cameras, but now it is time for hidden selfie camera. Oppo and Xiamoi are doing just that by placing the camera under the display itself. Today in a tweet, Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi showed off its exciting new design. Yesterday Oppo released a short video on a smartphone snapping a photo with an in-display that you can't see. To make the point clear, a finger was posed in front of the camera in the end of the video and you can see a blurry image of the finger on the screen.

Xiamoi also posted its own video to display a smartphone with an in-display selfie-camera. In the video the upcoming phone was compared with the Xiaomi Mi 9 side by side. The prototype has a full display with no cut-out, no notch or pop-up camera but it can still take a selfie just like a regular smartphone. Oppo didn't reveal much about the technology but Xiamoi get one step further by explaining the whole mechanism. The camera features a 20MP camera and a transparent display that doubles as the camera lens and allows more light into the lens to enable the perfect selfies, but when the display is off, the camera goes invisible against the rest of the black surface of the screen. These are just prototypes and there hasn't any real demo done by the companies in public so far. But we can hope for some of the best technologies to experience this year.

The in-display fingerprint scanner showing up on a Samsung device has now been a rumor for years and although it isn't nearly as old as the famous foldable smartphone rumors, they share a similarity in the fact that they both seem to take Samsung forever to release. While the foldable smartphone has been confirmed by the President of Samsung Mobiles, the in-display fingerprint scanner has so far only been a thing of speculations. However, some reports from South Korea are claiming that it is not a rumor or an expected feature anymore, but a confirmed feature that the Galaxy S10 will sport. To top things off, reports also indicate that Qualcomm is going to be the company that will supply Samsung with this elusive piece of tech.

If the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is indeed supplied by Qualcomm, it would lead to the question as to how the Exynos versions of the Galaxy S10 will support the tech ? Will Samsung release only future Qualcomm chip-powered versions of the Galaxy S10 ? Or will Samsung be making their own ultrasonic fingerprint scanners as well? We will let you know more on this as we find out ourselves.

Saikat Kar

The Galaxy Note 9 has finally been launched and while the memories are still fresh, it is already time to look forward to the Galaxy S10, because it might have a bunch of impressive features that the Galaxy Note 9 didn't. Make no mistake, the Note 9 is a very capable device, but it's nothing ground breaking in terms of design or functionality really. You can check out the full spec, price and feature list here. Having said that, could it be that some of the more impressive features, including the in-display fingerprint scanner would make their way onto the Galaxy S10? We certainly hope so, especially since it is predicted that most smartphones will have it in 2019.

It's a bit disappointing really that the huge 6.4-inch display of the Note 9 didn't have the Fingerprint on Display technology, aka FOD, given that both Huawei and Vivo have managed to incorporate it quite effectively in some of their high-end smartphones for months now. We are also expecting 3D cameras and 5G compatibility on the Galaxy S10, but it's still too early to tell for sure.

Saikat Kar