Ryan Haynes / Android Authority
summary
- A video has gone viral in which a user discovered they could access the depth camera on their CMF Phone 1 and use it to see through certain objects.
- Akis Evangelidis, co-founder of Nothing, responded to the video and explained what was happening:
- Evangelidis said the company plans to restrict third-party apps’ access to the depth sensor’s output “within a week.”
The CMF Phone 1 has just been released and is already getting a lot of praise for being fun and affordable. Android devicesIt’s only been on the market for a few days, but users are already discovering something a little surprising about the device: it can apparently use its depth sensor to see through certain objects.
To make CMF by Nothing’s first smartphone affordable, the company made some compromises. One of those compromises is a rear camera setup that includes a 50MP main camera and an undisclosed depth sensor in place of an official secondary camera. CMF made sure that this depth sensor wasn’t accessible in the usual way, but one crafty user managed to find a workaround to access it.
When using third-party apps in Developer Mode, user The camera in question had access to the output of the depth sensor: at first glance it looked like just a low-resolution monochrome camera, but that all changed when we pointed it at the back of a TV remote control: the depth sensor somehow managed to detect the batteries in the remote control, even though the cover was still on.
Does the CMF PHONE 1 have a see-through camera?
Akis wasn’t wrong at all! Nobody believed him at all, but I can say that 2MP is not a normal camera, it’s a see-through camera or an X-ray camera!
At this price point, this is commendable and truly amazing.
After the video went viral, Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis said: X (formerly Twitter) Here’s what’s going on: Evangelidis says that because the depth sensors on the new phones don’t have an infrared filter, this infrared light can “reveal the internal structure of thin or translucent objects.”
Nothing has some of the most knowledgeable and crafty users in the world, and it’s no exaggeration to say that our popularity attracts a lot of attention – ultimately, we see this as a good thing, as it encourages us to continually improve, benefiting our users.
While some think this is a pretty cool feature to have on a $200 phone, others see it as a privacy issue. Evangelidis announced that out of an abundance of caution, the company will now restrict third-party apps from accessing the depth sensor’s output, with the adjustment expected to arrive “within a week” via a software update.
When asked why the company decided to restrict access, Evangelidis agreed that it would be better to keep the feature, but added, “There are people trying to scam us from every angle. They’re not happy about our success, so we have to play it safe.”
