With 5G expected to roll out in the next year or two, OPPO is taking video calls to the next level. Their Global Research Institute in Shenzhen have just demonstrated the world’s first 5G Video Call using 3D structured light technology.

While normal video calls allow two or more parties to see each other in real time, OPPO’s new solution can reproduce a 3D portrait image of yourself on the remote device. It uses portrait information collected from a structured-light 3D camera on an OPPO smartphone.

For this demonstration, they used a customised OPPO R11s that has RGB and structured-light cameras to collect colour and 3D depth information. This is then transmitted over a 5G environment with 5G NR terminal prototypes from Qualcomm. This is just one of OPPO’s exploration of new applications for 5G. The real-world benefits are yet to be seen and hopefully, it doesn’t end up to be another variation of animoji.

In the past, OPPO had demonstrated several technological breakthroughs like its Super VOOC fast charging that can fully charge a phone in just 15 minutes. There’s also the 5X Zoom periscope-style dual-camera technology which was unveiled at MWC 2017. Unfortunately, we don’t see these features on an actual OPPO product. However, OPPO is aiming to commercialise this structured light technology on OPPO phones in about 6 months’ time.