The Galaxy Z Fold 7 does away with the under-display camera found on previous generations of the phone. Many reviewers praise this as a positive change. Personally, I’m sad to see Samsung give up on this technology—I want to see it on more phones, not less.
Form Is Its Primary Function
An under-display camera is a front-facing camera that lies underneath the screen of your phone or tablet. Currently, the camera doesn’t actually go behind your main display and instead appears behind a tiny, transparent screen that lets in enough light for the camera.
The technology first appeared on the ZTE Axon 20 5G, though Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, and Vivo have all followed suit. Samsung has been the most visible champion of the tech in the US, introducing it on Galaxy Z Fold 3 and re-using the same implementation on every model until the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
The appeal of under-display cameras is their ability to provide the appearance of an uninterrupted screen. You can view photos, watch videos, and browse maps without the visuals being disrupted by a hole-punch camera hole. As someone whoregularly reads digital comics on a foldable phone, this is something I deeply appreciate. I like a camera whose primary function is staying out of the way.
That’s not to say there are no downsides. There are reasons the industry never fully got on board. Under-display cameras never actually disappear, and some people find the resulting pixelated look of a screen extending over a hole to actually be more distracting than a black cutout. Plus, the image quality is worse. An under-display camera is simply an inferior camera—I don’t dispute this. It’s just, for me, this camera isn’t all that important to begin with.
I Rarely Use a Selfie Camera
I feel as though I can count the number of times I’ve used a front-facing camera for anything other than video calls on just two hands. I don’t mean on my current phone—I mean across all of the phones I’ve ever owned. And while this may be an exaggeration, it’s true that I rarely take casual selfies. When I do need a photo of myself, I tend to also want or need it in an image quality that, until recently, selfie cameras couldn’t provide.
For me, the primary role of front-facing cameras has been as an obstruction. This black dot distracts me on a semi-daily basis all so that I have the option to take a higher-quality selfie a couple times a year. I’d much rather prioritize having a better daily screen experience than make compromises in favor of the occasional selfie.
When I do use the front-facing camera, it’s typically for video calls. Here, the difference doesn’t matter all that much. I’m often a small square in someone else’s grid of small squares. Besides, the 4MP under-display camera on my current phone is still a significantly higher resolution than the 1.3MP camera many people are zooming from on their laptops.
Foldables Have Two Other Cameras for Selfies
I currently use aGalaxy Z Fold 6. There is currently no other device on the market in the US that does all that this phone can do, which is why I’m so invested in the changes made to future iterations of this phone.
When it comes to book-style foldables, the front-facing camera on the internal screen is much less relevant than on other phones. If I need a high-quality selfie, I can simply flip my phone around and take one using the 50MP camera on the back (200MP on the Z Fold 7!) while using the cover display as my guide.
Alternatively, I can use the front-facing camera cut into the cover display. A closed Z Fold is easier to hold up or place on a mount like a conventional phone. On my phone, that camera has more pixels than my internal camera as well.
If there’s one screen that can compromise on the quality of the selfie camera, it’s the large internal screen of a book-style foldable where users have not one, but two other options baked in.
If you don’t like the under-display camera, that’s perfectly valid. Most people very quickly stop noticing the cutout of a regular camera at the top of their screen. After all, the iPhone is the best-selling smartphone in the US, even though it has the largest cutout in the business. People, on average, tend to favor functionality over aesthetics, and I’m not making the case that any of you are wrong.
I’d just like for there to be at least a few options on market for those of us who would rather have the uninterrupted screen. With the camera disappearing from the Galaxy Z Fold 7, there’s hardly anywhere else to look, either on foldables or slab phones alike. Hopefully, if engineers can create an under-display camera that truly disappears behind the main screen without a hit to image quality, we’ll see the under-display camera return stronger than ever.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
If you’re missing the under-display camera, the Z Fold 6 is still a great buy today.
