If the iPhone 12's rumored notch has you wishing for a phone that keeps the selfie camera hidden under the screen, ZTE's Axon 20 5G will soon provide the answer.

ZTE has officially announced that it will unveil its new Axon 20 5G handset in China on September 1. And the company claims that it will be the first mass-produced smartphone with a front camera under the display.

ZTE tends to go for big smartphone "firsts" when it comes to new features. For example, the ZTE Axon 10 Pro 5G, which debuted in February 2019, was the first mass-produced 5G smartphone.

We were expecting this news thanks to the news revealed last week. There, ZTE President Ni Fei posted on Weibo that the company will bring this technology to market with the Axon 20.

That ZTE is the first phone to feature this technology is a major accomplishment for the company. But look at how the first cell phone, the Royole Flexpai, turned out.

Placing the camera below the screen has several technical problems that need to be solved. The display needs to be turned off where the camera is located when it is needed, but otherwise the owner needs to be able to use the camera app. In addition, capturing images through the display is likely to affect the quality of the image because the screen absorbs some of the light that would normally fall directly on the sensor.

Display maker Visionox believes it has solved these problems with its first mass-produced under-display camera in June. This could be the technology used by ZTE.

The Axon 20 5G's September 1 announcement will have to wait for Apple to announce the iPhone 12 and Google to announce the Pixel 5. Neither of these models will have a camera under the display. Therefore, it will probably be next year's iPhone 13, for example, before these and other major handset makers make a move to adopt this technology.

The first of these to appear will probably be Samsung; the Galaxy S30 is rumored to feature an under-display selfie camera, but according to one rumor, Samsung is only testing the feature, not that it will necessarily be included. Oppo and Xiaomi have been known to be developing their own under-display cameras for some time, but their efforts have yet to be commercialized.