All of us too characterized by the unsightly notch-cut-in-the-middle that adorned many smartphones over the years, such as iPhone X or LG G7.
The notch has largely been replaced on modern smartphones with floating cameras that take up less space and look more modern, although the notch is still prevalent on laptops, like Apple. MacBooks.
On the iPhone, Apple calls its floating pill-shaped camera system Dynamic Island, which debuted on iPhone 14. The iPhone still has the biggest camera cut today, thanks to its Face ID biometric authentication system. (Prevention Google Pixel phonesa large number of Android phones do not give a same secure face authentication(so they don’t need to cut out for multiple cameras.) This island may be even smaller, however, thanks to new low-profile camera technology announced at Exhibition Week 2026 from Metalenzan optical startup from Boston.
A Primer on Metasurfaces
Metalenz’s optical metasurfaces technology is a flat lens system that uses a fraction of the space of common multi-lens elements in most smartphones. You can Read more about it in our original coverage of the company herebut simply put, instead of bouncing light through multiple plastic or glass lens elements—which improves image clarity, corrects distortion, and brings more light to the camera’s sensor—meta surfaces use a single nano-patterned lens to bend light rays toward the sensors.
Metalenz says more than 300 million of its faces are already in use in consumer devices today, replacing traditional time-of-flight sensors that capture detailed information and assist with an automatic camera.
The company also developed a way to use these metasurfaces capture discrimination data. When light hits an object with specific material properties, it creates a unique diffraction signature. Light reflecting off black ice has a different diffraction signature than light reflecting off the road. Using machine learning algorithms, this enables a system that can quickly detect black ice on the road and alert the driver.
Photo: Courtesy of Metalenz
That’s why the company grew Polar IDa facial authentication platform to compete with Apple’s Face ID. With diffraction data, its sensors can distinguish a real face from a person wearing a terrifyingly accurate 3D mask of the same person, because the diffraction information from the light coming from the human skin is unique compared to the light bouncing off the mask’s silicone. Yes, it’s more secure than Google’s face unlock system on Pixels, which can be compromised with a high-resolution 3D mask.
