Phone Camera PSA

Okay, so I'm taking this video on my iPhone 16 Pro and you see, uh, you see those dots? That little constellation of stars right there? That's not supposed to be there. That is permanent, baked-in damage to the sensor of this phone

that's been in everything that I've taken for weeks. You might have even noticed it in a few shorts that I've published, shot on this phone, which is really annoying. So I've been trying for weeks to figure out how this happened, and I've settled on my final theory, LIDAR.

See, it's been documented in a few different cases that LIDAR, which is these quick bursts of lasers, can actually permanently damage a smartphone camera sensor in a very specific way. Like you can see it happening in real time in this video here, shooting a car. And the thing is I shoot every single auto-focus channel

video on a smartphone camera. And these dots started showing up on this camera suspiciously close to when I shot my video on the Volvo EX90, which does have LIDAR up at the top. It seems like most regular cameras are safe from this because the lenses are sufficiently protected from IR. They have better filters and coating,

but smartphones have to be thin and not all IR protection is made equal. So some of those are lacking enough that if you point it at the right LIDAR thing, it might damage it. So PSA, if you shoot a lot of videos of self-driving cars,

So PSA, if you shoot a lot of videos of self-driving cars, keep an eye out for little dots like that.