2015 · The notebook sketches
“What if the camera hides behind the screen?” The idea is born, in handwritten notes and a first rough prototype.
For curious minds · ages 10 and up
The camera that learned to hide.
Your phone has a camera for selfies. But cameras need a hole to peek through — and holes ruin the screen. One inventor spent 11 years teaching a camera to hide behind the glass. This is that story.
Chapter 1
Why is there a notch in your screen?
Pick up a phone and look at the top of the screen. See the little cutout? That’s the camera’s peephole. Here’s the problem: screens can’t see through themselves. They’re not windows — they’re walls of tiny lights. So phone makers had to cut a hole for the camera to peek through. That hole is called a notch. It eats into your videos, your games, everything you watch.
Chapter 2
The hiding trick
In 2015, an inventor named Manohar asked a different question. Instead of “where do we cut the hole?” he asked “what if there’s no hole at all?”
His idea: hide the camera behind the screen — like hiding behind a beaded curtain. You can peek through the gaps between the beads, right? A phone screen is like that curtain. It’s made of millions of microscopic lights called pixels. Above the camera, the screen thins out, leaving tiny gaps. Light from your face squeezes through those gaps and reaches the hidden camera. No notch. No hole. Just glass.
Chapter 3
The blurry problem (and the math that fixed it)
There was a catch. When light squeezes through tiny gaps, it goes fuzzy — like trying to look through a screen door. The first hidden-camera photos came out blurry.
So Manohar taught the phone to un-blur the picture with math. The phone knows exactly how the screen smudges the light — so it runs the smudge in reverse, pixel by pixel. Blurry in, sharp out. It’s like knowing exactly how a funhouse mirror warps your face, and using that knowledge to un-warp it.
Chapter 4
Eleven years, in five steps
Big inventions don’t happen in a weekend. Here’s how long this one took:
2016 · The first hidden camera
It actually took pictures! A working camera, vanished behind the display — before the world knew it was possible.
2018 · Calling dibs
The patent. A patent is how inventors call dibs: you write down exactly how your invention works, and the government agrees the idea was yours. Manohar’s name is first on this one.
2022 · Patent granted
It’s official. “Electronic device including a camera disposed behind a display” — try saying that three times fast.
2026 · It ships!
Eleven years later, it’s in your pocket. The iPhone Duo hides its selfie camera completely beneath the screen. The iPhone 18 Pro Max hides its Face ID camera under the glass.
Chapter 5
What’s next?
The screen is whole now — no more holes. But why stop at cameras? Manohar’s next idea is software-defined sensing: gadgets whose superpowers come from software, not just hardware. Eye-tracking with no camera at all. Screens that can see. If a camera can learn to hide, what else can disappear?
The inventor
Meet Manohar
Manohar Srikanth has a PhD from MIT — that’s a super-advanced degree for inventors and scientists. He works at Apple, building things that don’t exist yet. He’s also an artist and a photography teacher. His recipe: curiosity plus math. He believes the best technology feels like magic — but it’s really just someone refusing to accept “impossible.”