The tech world was recently shocked when it was revealed that the recent flagship smartphone camera from OnePlus could see through clothing and plastics.
In the four-chamber configuration of OnePlus 8 Pro, the color filter sensor is capable of seeing through objects that do not have IR protection.
Now, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer has announced that it will temporarily disable the “transparent” feature of the OnePlus 8 Pro camera. Announcing it in a weibo postOnePlus has apologized for the unwanted feature and has said that it will release an update in the Chinese region within a week to disable the camera feature.
Needless to say, a similar update will be rolled out to other regions as well. According to OnePlus, they will be temporarily disabling the feature, until privacy issues related to the feature are addressed.
What makes the feature problematic is the fact that the OnePlus 8 Pro's camera can see through the material of thin clothing, which could be misused to invade people's privacy.
This reminds me of a similar famous incident where Sony recalled 700,000 camcorders as they were supposedly able to see through clothing.
Nonetheless, OnePlus' decision to temporarily disable the OnePlus 8 Pro's X-ray vision feature is a sensible one, as there could be catastrophic implications of the Photochrom feature.
# OnePlus8Pro Color filter camera can see through some plastic objects ?
Here I tried the Oculus Quest controllers pic.twitter.com/z9j4hlkioB
— Ben Geskin (@BenGeskin) May 13, 2020
https://twitter.com/BenGeskin/status/1260466883993665536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw