Samsung Files Patent for a Display That Senses Light Without Extra Sensors

By Patentlyze Team · Updated Jul 10, 2026

Samsung Display is patenting a screen that doubles as a light sensor — embedding light-receiving elements directly into the panel and using a clever spatial trick to get clean readings without cross-talk from neighboring pixel groups.

What Samsung's light-sensing display panel actually does

Imagine your phone's screen could sense what's in front of it — your finger, your face, ambient light levels — without any dedicated sensor cutout or under-display camera module. That's the direction Samsung is pointing here.

The patent describes a display panel where light-receiving elements (basically tiny photodetectors) sit right alongside the light-emitting elements (the pixels you normally see). The tricky part is keeping those sensors from getting fooled by the glow of their nearest neighbor pixels. Samsung's answer: when one group of pixels lights up, you read the sensor data from a group that's farther away, not the one sitting right next to it.

It's a bit like taking a photo of something bright by looking slightly to the side rather than directly at it — you avoid the glare. The result is cleaner sensing data baked right into the display surface, with no extra hardware punching holes in the screen.

How the emit-and-skip sensing geometry works

The patent describes a display panel with two interleaved populations of elements on the same substrate: light emitting element groups (LEGs) arranged in rows along one axis, and light receiving element groups (LRGs) running parallel to them.

The sensing logic is the interesting part. When a first LEG fires, the system deliberately skips the LRG that's physically closest to it — because that nearby sensor would be overwhelmed by direct light from those pixels. Instead, the system reads from an LRG that sits adjacent to a different, currently-off LEG farther along the panel.

• LEGs all emit the same color of light, keeping the optical environment consistent for sensing
• LRG columns are interleaved with LEG columns along the same first direction
• The "skip the nearest sensor" rule reduces optical crosstalk (signal contamination from adjacent emitters)
• Sensing data is composited from the spatially offset LRGs to reconstruct what's in front of the screen

This is essentially a structured-light sensing approach — emit from one location, read from another offset location — implemented entirely within the flat panel stack rather than relying on a separate sensor layer or module.

What this means for under-display biometrics and sensing

Under-display sensing is one of the harder unsolved problems in display engineering. Current solutions — under-display fingerprint readers, under-display cameras — require optical compromises or dedicated cutouts. Integrating light-receiving elements directly into the emissive layer, and solving the crosstalk problem with a spatial offset trick rather than extra shielding hardware, could allow thinner devices with larger usable screen area.

For you as a user, the practical upside would be things like full-screen fingerprint reading, proximity sensing, or face-detection that works without a notch, pill cutout, or raised sensor bump — all enabled by the panel itself doing double duty as both display and sensor array.

Editorial commentary on a publicly published patent application. Not legal advice.