For the past decade, smartphone makers have tried to serve two opposing masters. They want to squeeze as much screen as possible into a phone chassis, while at the same time leaving enough room for the front-facing camera (a feature that’s become all the more important in the Zoom-centric reality of 2020).

Until now, most companies have solved this tug-of-war by carving out space for the camera in the display – first in the form of a notch, and more recently the hole-punch (with some interesting alternatives like pop-up cameras peppered in between). But notches are distracting at best and ugly at worst; pop-up cameras add weight and make repairs harder; and hole punch designs are incompatible with wide-angle cameras.

So the next question pretty much asks itself: why not just build the camera … right into the display? It’s a solution Xiaomi, Oppo and ZTE have all been working on, but only the latter has a product shipping with the technology on store shelves today – and in this video, we’re taking a close look…