I wish I could tell you that under-display cameras are the future of cell phones, but that future has yet to arrive. At least based on the time I spent in my ongoing Galaxy Z Fold 3 review.

The Galaxy Z Fold 3's 7.6-inch display uses under-display camera technology, which applies minimal pixels over the camera hole. The goal? To increase the viewable area and (nearly) eliminate the punch hole so that you get a clean canvas when watching Netflix, playing games, or enjoying other apps.

When you take a selfie using the Under Display Camera (UDC), a small hole appears in the upper right corner of the screen, and when you exit the camera app, the hole disappears. It's like magic. But how good is this 4MP camera? Based on my testing, I would say it is good, but not as good as I had hoped. [The other is the 10MP front camera on the Z Fold 3's cover screen. With the below-display camera, my face and images look a bit blurry and generally hazy. It looks like a photo from a very old camera phone.

On the other hand, the picture taken with the 10MP camera, while not perfect, shows more accurate skin tones and more detail in my shirt and hair. Also, the grass and fence in the background appear sharper.

Moving indoors, the situation with the Galaxy Z Fold 3's under-display camera was even worse: the UDC produced an image similar to what one would expect from a laptop webcam, with smoother features and an overall blurry look. Not terrible, but close.

The 10MP front camera produced much better results in that it looked more like a photograph than a painting. Seriously, the detail around the eyes and teeth looks great. I'd rather let this camera do the selfies for me.

So what about video? I called senior writer Kate Kozuch on Google Meet using the cam under the display, and she did not like what she saw. She said the overall image quality was "dull." It wasn't blurry, but she said she had expected better in terms of camera quality.

Kate captured a screenshot of our chat. And this was with the ring light on in front of me.

Bottom line: the under-display camera on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is a very intriguing innovation, but the image quality doesn't match the wow factor that disappearing cameras bring.