Over the years, smartphone trends have seen brands trying to remove bezels from the front of their devices. There were distracting notches, punch hole cutouts that removed bits of the screen itself, and finally, under display cameras that are either not invisible or compromised on image quality. Sony Xperia devices of today opted to stick with the more traditional bezels to keep the camera away from the screen. But rumour has it that the next flagship, the Sony Xperia 1 V, will try something new to remove both bezels while also keeping cameras away from the screen.
A post on Weibo claims that mass production of what is known as a micro-matrix multi-camera synthesis system has begun. According to Japanese website SumahoDigest, the poster has previously leaked accurate information on unpublished camera sensors and display components. The same poster shared two years ago that Sony was developing what is translated as a Micro Matrix compound eye camera tech.
To briefly explain, this micro-matrix multi-camera tech has multiple tiny cameras squeezed into the bezel. The images taken by these cameras are then synthesised into one image. The idea is that these cameras are tiny enough to be squeezed into smaller bezels, which will let phones get closer to a bezel-less design while still keeping the cameras away from the screen.
That being said the report shows two possible implementations of this tech. One being as described – four tiny cameras within the bezel. The other being having the four tiny cameras on the screen just beneath the bezels, but with them being small enough to not be as noticeable as current bezel-less designs.
(Source: Weibo, SumahoDigest via NotebookCheck)
