“… electrically-controlled prism colouring tech” sounds like some funky buzzword you’ll find in a vanity self-praising hype piece, no?
Well, it is something to do with prisms and how they handle light. From basic school science, when light hits a prism, it gets scattered, right? It is the same basis that Tecno is using for what it is calling a “Chameleon Colouring Technology”.
By controlling the said light scattering, one can come up with what appears to be a wide colour selection.
What if such was made to be the back of a smartphone?
That is precisely what Tecno appears to be keen on achieving with its demo of the Chameleon Colouring Technology at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.
“Chameleon colouring technology, formally known as full-spectrum electrically controlled prism colouring technology, will be the first-ever technology of its kind to be fully compatible with a smartphone device, and not only that, it will also be the first in the industry to offer full spectrum colour rendering and an astonishing total of 1600 different colours,” says Tecno in a statement.
“Users will be able to fully customize their device with this rich variety of colours and change it as frequently as they’d like. For those that don’t have time to ponder their own colour preferences, chameleon colouring technology will also allow the exterior to interact directly with the device, creating spontaneous and active colour designs based on the battery performance, the apps that are running, the surrounding air temperature, the music that is playing, etc. This effectively keeps the colouring consistently fresh and unique for the user, and it even lets the device’s exterior appearance interact with features like the camera.”
“Colour-changing technology has been popular in smartphones for a couple of years now, but while others were focusing on colour rendering and power consumption, Tecno decided to tackle the material challenge directly. By scattering light through the brand new sub-micron prism material, it’s able to achieve full-spectrum colour rendering as the direction of the sub-micron prism molecules is adjusted by the electric field, which creates multiple different wavelengths of light that appear as a gorgeous iridescent transformation.”
If this ends up being something that we get to see on the back of a smartphone, as Tecno initimates it will, then it won’t be the first time that we get to see Tecno experiment with light on the back design of a device. The company already did something like that last year with the Mondrian Edition of its popular Camon 19 Pro smartphone which had a back panel that changed colour when exposed to UV light.
In the wider smartphone world, we have seen something similar (a back panel changing colour upon exposure to UV light) from vivo.
Is this something you’d want on your smartphone?