Sony wants to put front camera sensors behind your smartphone’s display. Touchless gestures could be more accurate this way

Florin  By on 22 Mar 12

When you’re thinking about a front-facing camera, you immediately visualize that small, round sensor that’s usually found above a phone’s, or a tablet’s display. But what if this camera wouldn’t have to be next to the display?

Sony has recently filed a patent application that wants to give us exactly that: smartphones with front-facing cameras situated behind the display. According to the patent application, Sony actually intends to put four sensors behind the display: the proximity sensor, illuminance sensor, fingerprint sensor, and the actual camera sensor. Also included should be “a material configured to visually obscure the sensor(s) when viewed through the light-transmissive display screen” – so that you won’t notice any sensor when looking at the screen.

This would not only allow displays to be a tad taller, but would also open various possibilities. You won’t have to worry about how big the camera sensor is. Furthermore, touchleess gestures should work really great (Sony’s Xperia Sola already touts touchless gestures – but in this case Sony just makes use of different capacitive technologies, so it’s another story).

You can read the full patent application here.

It remains to be seen when Sony will make and launch a smartphone with camera sensors behind the display. But the idea is surely interesting, and could change a bit (or a bit more) the way we’re using our touchscreen devices.

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