ZTE Axon A20 5G with under-screen camera passes by China's TENAA

Some may think that innovation in the smartphone market has almost plateaued but there are still a few dreams that have yet to be fulfilled that don't involve foldable or rollable screens. One such dream is having a camera that hides underneath the screen, unseen until it is needed. Many manufacturers, including Samsung and Apple, have reportedly been trying to achieve it but ZTE might be the first one to actually come out with an under-screen camera in this Axon A20 5G.

To be fair, both Xiaomi and OPPO were the first to demonstrate the possibility of under-screen or under-display camera. They were also the first to admit last year that it was, at least back then, too early to start putting that technology into mass production. It was briefly rumored that the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra would be the first to make that happen but that didn't come to pass.

Now there are rumors that ZTE will be everyone to the punch when the Axon A20 5G made a surprise appearance on Weibo. As if to confirm the phone's existence, a certain ZTE A2121 appeared on TENAA to show the phone' four sides. Unfortunately, the screen is too black to confirm if it doesn't at least have a punch-hole cutout.

China's certification body does at least give some insight into the phone's specs, including an unidentified 2.4GHz octa-core processor, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4,120 mAh battery. Not only does it also show four cameras on the phone's back, but it also gives out 64MP, 8MP, and 2MP figures for at least three of them.

Unfortunately, not much else is known about this unexpected ZTE phone, including its launch date. Unfortunately, there's also a high chance that it won't matter much to most consumers outside of China but you can expect others to quickly follow suit after the Axon A20 5G's debut.