The 'phone camera bump' could soon be a thing of the past

The "camera bump" is one of the most disdained features of modern smartphones. It is the sacrifice people make for sticking good camera sensors into such thin phones. Occasionally, smartphone makers are able to avoid this, but most opt to make the handset as thin as possible. Now, German engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute believe they have found a way around this.

The engineers have designed a new smartphone camera module that uses four image sensors and a set of small mirrors on a panel that pops out of the side of a smartphone. At just 3.5mm, the sensor should be able to fit into modern smartphones.

The iPhone 7 is 7.1mm. The internals of the iPhone are supposedly already pretty snug, though. This was the excuse for excluding the 3.5mm headphone jack. Including this kind of camera in a smartphone might come with some sacrifices, but it is a long way from making it to that point.

The engineers showed off the camera at Mobile World Congress this year. The device takes 20MP photos and includes autofocus and image stabilization, which are common in smartphone cameras these days. The pop-out mechanism even has the added benefit of not being able to take pictures while tucked away, something that should appeal to the security-conscious. The specifications match what is found in high-end smartphones today, but the engineers told PCWorld that convincing manufacturers to adopt this kind of camera module is their biggest hurdle.