The notch finally begins to disappear
For nearly a decade, the notch — that small dark interruption carved into the top of a smartphone screen — has served as both a practical compromise and an unspoken admission of limitation. Xiaomi's leaked Mix 5, slated for global release in 2026, proposes to close that chapter by hiding the front-facing camera entirely beneath the display, achieving what engineers have long pursued but rarely delivered at scale. If the technology holds under the pressures of mass production, it may mark the moment the smartphone industry stops accepting its own constraints.
- The notch has defined smartphone aesthetics since Apple introduced it in 2017, and its persistence has quietly signaled that no one had truly solved the problem beneath it.
- Under-display cameras require pixels to be simultaneously opaque enough to show an image and transparent enough to let light reach a lens — a contradiction that has defeated years of prototypes.
- Xiaomi's Mix 5 leaks suggest the company believes it has cracked this contradiction, with a sensor embedded beneath a section of screen that maintains functional transparency without visible interruption.
- A successful commercial launch would pressure Samsung, Apple, and others — all of whom have invested in similar research — to accelerate their own timelines or risk looking behind.
- 2026 may be the year the notch begins its industry-wide retreat, not with a single announcement, but with the quiet proof that the baseline everyone accepted was never the ceiling.
Xiaomi is preparing to release a phone with no notch. The Mix 5, which surfaced in leaks this week, will conceal its front-facing camera beneath the display itself — a technical achievement that has defined the ambitions of smartphone engineers for years without fully arriving in consumer hands. A global launch is planned for 2026.
The notch entered mainstream design with the iPhone X in 2017 and never really left. It became the visual signature of the modern smartphone, so familiar that its removal felt less like progress and more like correcting an old mistake. Yet that correction proved stubbornly difficult. Under-display cameras must allow light to pass through active pixels — a contradiction that manufacturers have approached through successive generations of prototypes and partial solutions, most of which compromised either image quality or display performance.
Xiaomi's approach, based on leaked specifications, embeds the sensor beneath a section of screen with sufficient transparency to function without any visible break in the display. The result would be a phone that appears entirely uninterrupted — no notch, no punch-hole, no compromise of the kind Samsung and Google have settled for in recent years.
The timing carries weight. Smartphone design has largely stalled, with manufacturers refining processors, cameras, and batteries rather than rethinking the form itself. Eliminating the notch has remained a kind of engineering north star — a problem worth solving because solving it changes how the entire device is perceived.
If the Mix 5 delivers on its leaks without meaningful sacrifices to image quality or brightness, competitors will face real pressure to follow. The broader shift won't be immediate, but a successful Xiaomi product would validate the technology commercially and shorten the timeline for others. The notch may not vanish overnight — but 2026 could be the year it begins to.
Xiaomi is preparing to ship a phone without a notch. The Mix 5, which leaked this week, will hide its front-facing camera beneath the display itself—a technical feat that has eluded most manufacturers until now, despite years of incremental progress toward the goal. The device is slated for a global release in 2026.
The notch, that small dark rectangle carved into the top of a phone's screen to house the selfie camera and sensors, has defined smartphone design for nearly a decade. Apple introduced it with the iPhone X in 2017, and the industry followed. It became the visual signature of modern phones, so ubiquitous that removing it felt less like innovation and more like returning to a baseline. Yet the baseline proved harder to reach than expected. Under-display camera technology requires the pixels directly above the lens to remain transparent enough for light to pass through while still displaying an image—a contradiction that manufacturers have wrestled with through multiple generations of prototypes and false starts.
Xiaomi's approach, based on the leaked specifications, appears to solve this by embedding the camera sensor beneath a section of the screen that maintains sufficient transparency. The result, if the leaks hold, is a display that appears uninterrupted from edge to edge, with no visible interruption for the camera at all. This represents a meaningful departure from the punch-hole design that Samsung, Google, and others have adopted as a compromise—a smaller, less obtrusive alternative to the notch, but still a hole.
The timing matters. Smartphone design has stalled in recent years. Manufacturers have refined existing forms rather than reimagined them, focusing incremental improvements on processor speed, camera sensors, and battery capacity. The notch and its variants have become so normalized that their removal barely registers as noteworthy in consumer conversation. Yet for designers and engineers, eliminating it entirely has remained a north star—the kind of technical problem that justifies investment because solving it changes how people perceive the entire device.
Xiaomi's global launch in 2026 suggests the company believes the technology is ready for mass production, not just prototype stage. That confidence could accelerate adoption across the industry. If the Mix 5 delivers a functional under-display camera without significant compromises to image quality or display brightness, competitors will face pressure to follow. Samsung, Apple, and others have invested in similar research; a successful commercial product from Xiaomi would validate the approach and shorten the timeline for others to ship their own versions.
The broader implication is that smartphone design may finally be entering a new chapter. For years, the industry has been locked in a holding pattern, iterating on the same basic form. The notch became a symbol of that stagnation—a necessary compromise that everyone accepted because no one had solved the underlying problem. If Xiaomi's under-display camera works as advertised, it removes that excuse. The next generation of flagships could look genuinely different, not just incrementally refined. That shift won't happen overnight, but 2026 may be the year the notch finally begins to disappear.
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Why does it matter that Xiaomi is hiding the camera under the display? Isn't the notch just a design detail?
It's more than aesthetics. The notch represents a technical problem that the industry has been unable to solve for nearly a decade. If Xiaomi cracks it, it signals that the compromise everyone accepted is no longer necessary.
But Samsung and others have already moved to smaller punch-holes. Isn't that good enough?
It's a workaround, not a solution. A punch-hole is still a hole—it still interrupts the display. An under-display camera means the screen is truly unbroken. That's the difference between accepting a limitation and actually removing it.
What's the technical challenge? Why has it taken so long?
You need the pixels above the camera to be transparent enough for light to reach the sensor, but opaque enough to display an image. Those requirements contradict each other. Xiaomi apparently found a balance.
If this works, what happens next?
Competitors will have to follow. Once one company proves it's viable at scale, staying with punch-holes becomes indefensible. You'll see a wave of under-display cameras across flagships within a year or two of the Mix 5's launch.
So 2026 could be a turning point for phone design?
Potentially. Smartphone design has been static for years. This is the first genuinely new direction in a while. If it works, it breaks the logjam.