Back in April 2020, during the global COVID-19 lockdown, OnePlus launched its flagship OnePlus 8 Pro via an online event. This phone came with some promising specs, a quad-camera setup and lots of hype.
One of those cameras was a 5 MP “Colour Filter Camera” (sometimes called the Photochrom lens mode) that wasn’t just about regular pictures. It was built to pick up infrared light, basically the kind of light our eyes can’t see.
The idea was to give users a cool, artsy filter-camera effect. But, as you’d expect, things got weird.
The “X-ray camera” sensation
So users discovered something wild: when you switched to the Photochrom/colour-filter mode, the phone could see through certain thin plastics (like remote casings) and even some dark fabrics under very specific conditions. Basically, it’s camera could see through light fabrics, that were in dark colours.
It wasn’t like superhero X-ray level, but enough to raise eyebrows. OnePlus itself admitted under “extreme circumstances” this lens might have a “perspective effect on special materials at very close distances”.
This resulted in many tech forums calling it the “X-ray mode” of the OnePlus 8 Pro. And you can imagine: while cool for gimmicks, privacy alert flags were flying.
OnePlus backs off (temporarily)
The backlash was real. Initially, many people got excited with this innovative feature but later the realisation hit hard, “yeh camera humari privacy ko bypass toh nahi kar raha?”
But, OnePlus responded to the outrage. They announced that they would temporarily disable the colour filter (Photochrom) mode via an OTA (software) update.
What happened next:
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Update OxygenOS 10.5.9 started rolling out in China first, then globally, which removed the Photochrom filter, so this camera became “almost useless indoors”.
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OnePlus said they would “work on technical solutions” to prevent misuse and then bring back a trimmed version of the feature.
Why exactly did this happen?
Now, if you’d look at this matter from a techie perspective, it definitely was a great innovation! But, here’s a real flip to the story; it wasn’t an innovation but an accident.
Normally, smartphone cameras have an IR or infra-red filter so they don’t pick up infrared light as it messes up colours and can add weird effects.
But OnePlus removed or altered that IR filter for this colour-filter camera, so it could capture images in infrared. That opened the window, quite literally to some see-through-ish capability.
In simpler words, instead of the IR light being blocked, this sensor was more open to it. Under good light, with thin/dark materials, you could catch what’s behind. Crazy, yes. Super sketchy? Also yes.
