While we may have great sensor sizes in modern phones, mobile photography is stymied by one thing – physics. The megapixel number may be high, but physically the camera module is small, that the lens size is limited by the space available on the phone itself. A new breakthrough in material design may just do away with this problem – and it involves putting metal on your phone camera.
Harvard researchers have developed a "metalens" that substitutes the usual glass with quartz plates full of microscopic titanium oxide structures, whose patterns guide light toward the camera sensor. This technology not only allows much smaller lenses to be created (researchers have made lenses only 2 milimeters wide), but the lens can be simpler and cheaper to made too.
The technology is still in its infancy, but the technology promises better image quality on smartphones for mobile photography in the future. Who knows – we may just see the start of almost-DSLR quality images to appear from smartphones in the future?
[Source]
COMMENTS