Presumably, this is where marketing and engineering collide. Marketing wants amazing devices. To them, thin seems to be amazing. But so are good cameras. Engineering can’t defy the laws of physics and needs a minimum device thickness for the cameras. But marketing wants both: a great camera and a thin phone. Consequently, the device is designed to be thin, then the camera is packed in, and the housing is molded around it. The result: we have a camera bump on the housing.
And some guy thought to himself: Yep, that looks good, that’s practical. Let’s go to market with that. And the others just followed suit. Some at least with a continuous bump across the back, others just in a corner. So the smartphone never lies flat anywhere, and it also creates a pressure point in your pocket. Right on the camera lenses, which you don’t want to scratch or damage. And for what? So the device can be thinner everywhere else. Which doesn’t help me at all, because the camera is still the thickest part.
But what else would we all like in a smartphone? Battery life! If you look at the batteries in smartphones, they aren’t actually that big, but their shape is quite adaptable. Now, if I take the 1.2mm that the camera lenses stick out of my iPhone 15 Pro Max and make the smartphone thicker by that amount, I could fill the free space with more battery. Artificial intelligence gives me pretty high numbers for that question, but doubling the battery capacity seems feasible to me. But even if it’s only 50%, that’s free battery life.
Unfortunately, it seems no one is actually doing this. Not Apple, not Samsung, and not Xiaomi either. I just don’t get it. All smartphones have these camera bumps. Okay, cheap smartphones often don’t. Their cameras are worse and the quality isn’t as important. Or the device is simply thicker. Even without more battery. They’re also cheaper because not everything is engineered to the absolute limit, making manufacturing less expensive. It’s a shame that we as consumers don’t have the choice. Once again, the manufacturers know better what the customer wants. How about an iPhone 17 Pro MaxPower as an additional line, even if it’s 50 euros more expensive? It will remain a dream…