Exclusive: Your Smartphone Camera Could Get a Big Upgrade With This Tech

When you snap a photo with your smartphone, the camera captures light and converts it into electrical signals to build a digital image. But the Bayer filter—a red, green, and blue layer that sits above the sensor and adds color to your images—absorbs and wastes around 60 percent of that light before it can reach the sensor. To make a red pixel, the filter blocks and throws away blue and green light.

Now, the Boston company Metalenz has acquired an Israeli startup called PxE Holographic Imaging, which has developed a new optical layer called a HoloCoder. This microscopic structure sits directly on top of the image sensor and diffracts light, bending the light waves rather than absorbing them.