When making a phone thin and light, one of the things we’ve noticed that every OEM struggles with is the camera. Camera humps are common in almost every smartphone that we see in the market, no matter how thin the OEM wanted to make it. Apple’s approach has always been to drive thin-and-light designs, but with rumors of the iPhone 6 being just as thin as the current generation iPod touch, we wonder how Apple plans to pull that off since the iPod Touch does have a camera hump, and today some new patents reveal what seems to be the path that Apple will take.
The USPTO has just granted Apple a new camera patent that uses a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) in oder to focus the camera. At the moment the industry standard is to use a voice coil motor (VCM), which can be quite simple and reliable, but which is very power hungry and also bigger in size than the MEMS technology that Apple plans to use. This new technology can also be less expensive than the current VCM technology if done right, and it could lead to a new industry standard for the future.
Obviously no part of the patent states that this will be part of the iPhone 6, but there is just no other way for Apple to build a phone this thin without it, so we can always assume.
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