Sony is approaching mass production of curved camera sensor for smartphones

Sony has already made a hundred prototypes in its R&D lab of a curved camera sensor made for digital cameras and smartphones. The bend causes light to fall perpendicular to the sensor. As a result, the sensor captures much more light, especially at the edges.

Sony has now made 100 of those curved cmos camera sensors, indicating that the company is preparing to mass-produce the curved sensors. When that will happen, the Japanese giant has not yet reported.

The sensor of the prototypes has the same curvature as the human eye, Sony told IEEE Spectrum during an event in Hawaii. Sony brings that curvature into it via a ‘bending machine’ that literally bends a conventional flat sensor. Sony then fixes the sensor again with a ceramic material.

Sony engineers claim that a camera system with the curved sensor in the center captures 1.4 times as much light as a comparable flat sensor, while at the edges it is even twice as much; this is because the aperture can be wider thanks to the curved sensor. This is because the light also hits the sensor at a smaller angle at the edges due to the curvature.

Sony is developing two such sensors: one with a diameter of 11mm for smartphones and a larger one of 43mm for digital cameras. Sony has been working on curved camera sensors for a few years now. Flat sensors from Sony can be found in smartphones of almost all brands, including those from Apple and Samsung.