Metalenz's Polar ID face-scanning technology works even when the camera is hidden under the display. The notch has largely been replaced on today's smartphones by floating punch-hole cameras that take up less space and look a little more futuristic, though notches are still prevalent on some laptops, like Apple's MacBooks . On the iPhone, Apple calls its floating pill-shaped camera system the Dynamic Island, which debuted on the iPhone 14 . The iPhone still has the largest camera cutout today, due to its Face ID biometric authentication system. This island could get much smaller, however, thanks to new under-display camera technology announced at Display Week 2026 from Metalenz, a optics startup from Boston.

A little more than six years ago, Apple unveiled Face ID. It was a new method to biometrically unlock iPhones and authenticate purchases by scanning your face. Google's Pixel 8 has face unlock, but it has trouble working in the dark; the face unlock available on Samsung smartphones can't be used for secure applications, such as banking. In Android land, the fingerprint scanner is king, but that might not be the case for long. Metalenz, a startup pioneering optics technology called "optical metasurfaces," is hard at work on introducing secure face authentication to Android with its Polar ID technology.