Metalenses are a relatively fringe optical technology — at least, they were. Until now, it has been largely pursued by startups and scientists but that is changing as Canon has jumped into the fray and not only makes them but also produces the equipment necessary to manufacture them.
The goal of a metalens would be to, eventually, wholly eliminate the smartphone camera bump.
They’ll do anything to avoid giving us a slightly thicker battery…
Right? Why not increase battery thickness, then no more camera bump!
Reviewers then write “it’s got great battery life, but it’s so bulky” and take a star off. It’s possible nobody actually cares, or that most people think extra battery life is worth the bulkiness. But that’s what reviewers will write, and it will affect sales.
See also: laptop bezels. Reviewers say you’re supposed to want the thinnest one possible. Problem is, web cams tend to be better if they can be bigger, and there isn’t enough room in those thin bezels for a good one. Thus, your laptop web cam looks substantially worse than your smartphone.
Reviewers need to think harder about what they emphasize.
It’s so weird what reviewers will focus on. The tiny bezel thing is terrible, for phones and laptops.
I need to be able to hold my phone - without bezels I’m constantly touching the wrong part of the screen.
And you already covered the laptop webcam. OK, fine, make the side and bottom bezels smaller, but leave the top one for… Wifi antennas and webcam?
My previous phone was a motoG power and though it was bulky and a bit laggy the battery life was amazing. It’s I think 3 years old now and I still use it in airplane mode for reasons. The battery lasts 3 weeks when I don’t touch it. Compare that the s22 I’m typing this on which barely lasts 1 day in standby with batter saver enabled. I hate this phone after having that sweet multi day battery life.
Ok, to be honest, Samsung software was crap and is still crap. They only fixed the lagginess with more cpu/gpu power, leading to shorter battery life.
Yep, battery size and life was increasing nicely… Once it got to 1 day for the “average” user (i.e. People who barely use them) manufacturers said “good enough”.
I charge 2-3 times a day… Though I don’t let it get below 30%, mostly in case I need to suddenly walk out the door.
And I can’t even buy an external battery phone case these days, like I used to.
Yeah I’m old enough to have started with candy bar phones. Battery life has been creeping back below 1 day for a while. That motoG power would play music on Bluetooth all day if I started at 10% battery. It could also sit at 1% battery for hours if I didn’t touch it. Getting this new flagship phone is making me realize I value battery life way more than I realized.
Biggest issue with the older motoG was the camera sucked. I think the new version fixed that so I’ll probably go back to it.
Fuck smartphones, I wanna finally have glasses that are thin, light, and without distortions, reflections, or chromatic aberration
And have a bigger sweet spot.
Same for VR headset optics.
Is this currently limited by lens diameter? It seems it would be - so huge glasses would be more forgiving in this sense?
Mainly it’s number of lenses.
High quality camera lenses have like 10-20 lenses, while glasses have … 1Sir, that’s called a monocle.
And I want a pony.
Okay Mr. Hands.
I’d take a thicker battery any day of the week.
“Oddly, Canon declined to provide PetaPixel with detailed information about its metalens technology and also chose not to provide any photos of its tech” Oddly a megatech corporation elected to keep a tight grip on its early IP? 🤔
Nah, used to get these in the bottom of a packet of chips with a pokemon on em.
Tazos
Really cool tech, hopefully this means the costs of producing them will eventually decrease to affordable levels.
I wonder when companies are going to shift from making stupid stuff we don’t need like this and start working on things to clean up the environment they destroyed making things for the last 40 years.
Why would they?
I’m not being trite, I’m being serious. If they’re not given a reason to do so, companies don’t do things.
If you really think that is a viable business then you should be shifting towards creating said business that makes money working on things to clean up the environment.
He didnt ask when companies will shift to making money. He asked when will companies shift to making things we need.
Money is a useful tool, but it is not life sustaining by itself. Our species existed without money for longer than we’ve had money.
What humans really need is a habitable planet where we can feed ourselves, have shelter and cultivate culture with others.
Unfortunately the desire for money has disincentivised taking care of the ecosystem that provides food, protects us from solar radiation and keeps us and our crops from baking or freezing to death.
It’s wishful thinking to hope that companies will change their goals and prioritize whatever someone else says. Ultimately companies are trying to create profit by providing value. If we want them to change we need to understand what motivates a company. If someone “disagrees” and thinks reality should be something else, then no one is stopping them from forming a company and run it under those principles.
Agreed! I think your first paragraph was the commentor’s point, though I dunno
It’s pretty sad that actually doing things to help our ecosystem is for the most part very unprofitable.
I think we need to address the problem by preventing companies from externalizing their costs. If they had to pay exactly as much as it cost to clean up the pollution they emit then they will actually internalize that cost and have financial incentives to decrease pollution. I am obviously oversimplifyng since the cost is not constant and this would create a financial incentive to create companies that remove/ filter pollutants more effectively and efficiently.
It’s complicated because it requires international agreements but it’s a more realistic approach than thinking companies should do it because we need them to.
Hell yeah!
Great point. The WTO has been effective at enforcing international trade agreements.
Most of their enforcement has been things like forcing countries to import tuna caught with dolphin- killing nets and other messed up stuff… … but they could totally enforce a carbon & pollution fee system for internationally traded goods.
Being that they are essentially run by international conglomerates, I doubt they will, but they are positioned to.
Please shut up.
Stop whining
Okay 👌
But you gotta admit that this is fucking cool. And its relatively innocent compared to some other inventions.
So basically nano-scale Fresnel lenses?
Those are beautiful. A couple years ago I went on a hunt trying to find one to hang up as wall art. They are pricey.
I wonder if they have any application in optical networking, like making wavelength selective switches (WSS) cheaper, more reliable, or smaller.
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I think they’re metal enses
