Infineon Anticipates ToF Camera to Become Standard Feature in Smartphones

SemiconductorForYou publishes an interview with Philipp von Schierstaedt, SVP RF & Sensors at Infineon. Few quotes:

"We see a development towards 3D ToF image sensors as a standard for high-end smartphones on the front camera – flagship phones are already proving this – and on the rear camera. The fastest growing will surely be the rear camera with above 500 million units/y over the next years. The deployment of 3D sensing technologies will follow this growth as they solve the challenges that new applications set to the rear camera and that traditional 2D technologies fail to accomplish: a real 3D depth map.

Still, challenges exist, for example current commercial devices deploying existing 3D image sensing solutions are not yet able to provide a reasonable resolution without significant trade-offs on extended distance ranges and on the power consumption.

Such shortcomings are now being addressed by the latest 3D ToF imager generations in the REAL3 portfolio of Infineon. Therefore we’re convinced that we will see our new 3D sensor either enabling new classes of applications or taking existing applications to a new level of quality and user experience."