OnePlus has shown off the Concept One phone at CES today and it comes with an ND filter for the camera on the back.
It does this partly with the electrochromic glass that covers the rear-facing camera sensors. And partly with the “ND8” setting that can be found in the camera UI options that you can toggle on or off.
In practice it should be a pretty interesting feature. One that would make smartphone photography a little more advanced then it is now. Since there’s currently no feature like it on any other phone.
A OnePlus phone with an ND filter is still just a concept
As cool as a phone with an ND filter would be, it’s still just a concept. According to OnePlus, it doesn’t have any sort of a timeline for when this would be implemented on a phone.
Or at least, it hasn’t publicly mentioned a timeline. It could have one in mind that it’s discussed internally, of course.
Regardless of all that though, OnePlus at the least seems to envision putting this feature into a phone it can sell to consumers. When the time is right.
Before any of that can happen, OnePlus says it has kinks to work out before it can implement the ND filter setting for the camera (or the electrochromic glass) in a phone that it puts on the market.
The ND filter feature isn’t variable
According to The Verge, the ND filter setting in the camera’s Pro Mode isn’t variable. It’s a single toggle for ND8 and that’s it. Meaning you get the one level of filtering and nothing more.
The reason for that could be because this is still just a concept. And OnePlus may have thought it to be useless to make the filter adjustable before it really got things right on just the one setting.
In either case, since this is a concept, OnePlus could always make the ND filter adjustable in a production model phone if it ever makes and sells one. It’s also a feature that breathes some life into phone cameras.
In an age where phone camera improvements are mostly limited to improving the quality of the sensors, or just adding more sensors, an ND filter is something that is actually different. Even if OnePlus doesn’t implement it right away, it gets the ball rolling.
Other companies will surely take note and start to work on their own versions of the tech. Or at least, they should.