Nothing shutters the cool CMF Phone 1 camera peeping it didn't plan for
When a fan discovered an inadvertent usage of the "depth" camera on the quirky new phone from Nothing - the CMF 1 - he immediately sparked a reaction from Nothing's co-founder Akis Evangelidis.
He pledged to plug what might have become the most talked about feature of Android's new budget darling, the CMF 1, that costs only $199 via Nothing's Beta program in the US.
When CMF 1 user Maxwell Lu started to play around with the phone's software, they did what any self-respecting Android geek would do, namely dive into developer mode and use a third-party app to access the raw abilities of the camera system.
Here comes the kicker. The $199 CMF 1 is keeping things affordable by playing around with just one 50MP main camera for all photography and videography tasks. It does, however, comes accompanied by a cheap 2MP "depth" sensor, which the owner was trying to access to see if it could be of any use besides providing depth-of-field data somehow.
It turned out that the humble monochrome sensor has some surface piercing abilities, and the unfiltered infrared light it emits can pass through thin plastic and reveal what's underneath. This is how the CMF 1 phone managed to see through a remote, for instance, and display the batteries inside under their cover.
"Unlike typical cameras, our depth sensor doesn't have an infrared light filter, enhancing its light-capturing ability," explained Akis, and said that "by definition, this includes infrared light, which can sometimes reveal the internal structure of thin or semi-transparent objects, especially when it's black acrylic material."
He then went on to inform that Nothing will be plugging this option and phones with the latest update don't seem to be able to do the see-through trick now indeed. Akis Evangelidis explained Nothing's quick reaction with privacy and security concerns, even though fans insisted that it would be pretty cool to have the peaky camera feature on a budget phone like the CMF 1.
Granted, the Oppo Find X3 Pro had one better, a microscope camera that could snap a macro shot of a tick's head, but it was a much more expensive phone, too, and that extra camera never took off, although it was cool to have as a party trick.
In the list of quirky cameras uses, however, having a see-through set on a $199 phone is high up there fighting for the top place, so Nothing fans may be sad to see this utilization of the depth camera go.
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