Look at the phone in your hand right now. If you're an Android user, you'll see a hole for a selfie camera on the screen. If you're an iPhone user, you'll see a large camera hole or notch at the top of the screen. This is because existing face scanning systems require cameras or infrared emitters that cannot be blocked to work.
At the Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week 2026 this week, Metalenz showed off its Polar ID Under Display technology that puts its face scanning system completely under the OLED screen. It uses only one camera to work and, according to Metalenz, has anti-fraud features that cannot be intercepted, allowing it to be used as verification for payments on the device.
They use their own developed Metasurfaces technology to allow the camera to capture polarized light information even under the screen, something that existing systems cannot achieve without being too large or losing image quality. At this point, Polar ID Under Display technology is still being refined with the target of being used on smartphones by 2028.
