This smartphone has a front camera hidden under the screen

Each week, we spotlight a cool innovation recommended by some of the industry's top tech writers. This week's pick is a phone with an under-display front camera.

The Chinese phone maker ZTE appears to be the first company ready to launch a phone with an under-display camera, said Taylor Lyles at The Verge​. The innovation represents a breakthrough for smartphone designers, who have been "teasing" prototypes for phones "that include a front camera hidden beneath the screen" for more than a year.

Companies have been moving toward "smartphones with edge-to-edge screens" that offer cleaner visuals for streaming movies or gaming. Some manufacturers, including Lenovo, have introduced "selfie" cameras that pop up from the side of the phone, but an under-display camera is "a more elegant solution without moving parts inside the phone." Leaked images of ZTE's Axon 20 5G, which is expected to launch in China in September, show a perfectly smooth OLED display, which conceals a 32-megapixel front camera.

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.