Bloomberg: Apple plans to launch iPhones with a 15-feet range 3D rear camera as soon as in 2020, according to Bloomberg sources. Apple has been in talks with Sony about testing ToF sensors for the new system. The main use case for the 3D rear camera is AR applications.
GSMArena reports that an oncoming Sony Xperia XZ4 smartphone will have 0.3MP ToF sensor in its rear camera cluster:
They've been working on this for years. I heard about this a few years ago, expressed with the belief that it would be in Apple phones well before now (like a couple of years ago).
ReplyDeleteApple's acquisitions is always a clue to what they're working on. They started making AR acquisitions in 2015 with Metaio, then another in 2016 with Flyby Media (the next two after that are both around the headsets, so that's different).