Several users of the OnePlus 8 Pro are claiming on Twitter and XDA Developers that a new update pushed out for the OnePlus 8 Pro uses the wide-angle camera in place of the colour-filter lens to produce the same effects, according to XDA’s Mishaal Rahman.
https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1280612473406660618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The colour filter lens became the centre of controversy on the latest OnePlus flagship device after it was found to see through thin plastic objects and thin clothes. OnePlus took note of that after the phones went on sale in Europe and US, and disabled the camera in the next update. In India, however, the colour filter lens was never allowed to be used. It came disabled right out of the box, with the promise of a future update enabling it.
Looks like that update is nowhere in the form of the OxygenOS 10.5.10 update where OnePlus has seemingly fixed the issue, but as it turns out, it hasn’t quite done so.
Instead of making the colour filter lens less potent to see through objects, the latest OxygenOS 10.5.10 that’s rolling out to OnePlus 8 Pro users in Europe uses the wide-angle camera to get the same effects using software. So, instead of using the actual colour filter hardware, OnePlus has doubled back to offer a software-based implementation on the primary wide-angle camera.
Hawk-eyed enthusiasts figured this out by turning on the Photochrom filter from the camera settings and covering each lens to see which one blocks the viewfinder. Turns out, it’s not the colour filter sensor located on the left side of the main camera array, but the middle lens in the camera setup. Which is the primary wide-angle 48MP camera.
But in all, the Photochrom mode is now back again, and this time, it can’t see through clothes. So OnePlus has solved the issue. But this also raises the question of redundancy. If it was possible for OnePlus to offer the Photochrom mode via the primary camera itself, why was the physical colour filter lens necessary? If it’s purely a software play, it may also be possible for older OnePlus devices to get the same feature through an update. Will OnePlus follow through? The colour-filter lens was supposed to set the OnePlus 8 Pro apart, by making it a unique feature. But at the end of the day, it’s easy to dismiss the feature as a gimmick over anything useful.