TECH

OnePlus 8 Pro Camera Can See Through Some Plastics and Clothes

It's been discovered that the OnePlus 8 Pro smartphone has a surprise feature that can make you temporarily feel like a superhero.
As The Verge reports, it's possible to use one of the filters in the OnePlus Pro 8's camera app to see through some black plastics and clothing fabrics. The limits of the transparency offered mean this is definitely more of a cool unexpected feature than privacy concern, though.
If you own a OnePlus Pro 8 it's easy to test the see through capabilities of the phone. Simply open the camera app and access the available color filters.

The filter furthest to the right in the list called "Photocrom" is the one to select before pointing the camera at an object covered in black plastic. It works best with very thin black plastic, such as the casing on an Apple TV, or on objects that already use semi-transparent black plastic such as the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller.
Ben Geskin posted a great video on Twitter showing how the Apple TV casing becomes transparent using Photocrom, and Unbox Therapy put together a video explaining how it works.

The reason this works is due to the inclusion of infrared sensors on the phone. We can't see infrared with the naked eye, but it can be captured with the right equipment and gadgets such as night vision goggles take advantage of it to offer a clear view to the wearer in complete darkness. So if you ship a phone with infrared sensors, it's possible to use them in the same way. The iPhone TrueDepth camera can also be used to make objects look see through, but right now it requires an iPhone jailbreak to work.

By Matthew Humphries