The development of curved image sensors may be the biggest advance in camera technology in decades, allowing for simpler, flatter lenses with larger apertures as well as dramatically better image quality. Canon, Nikon, and Sony are working on the technology, and now Microsoft Research has developed a sensor with three times more curvature than previously achieved.
Sony's KW1 perfume bottle-themed selfie camera was only interesting to us -- as anything more than a novelty -- for one unconfirmed reason: claims that it housed Sony's first ever curved sensor. But, until yesterday, we had no idea whether or not this was true.
It doesn't get much more niche (or weird) than this... after releasing a teaser and leaking some images of a very nearly unbelievable perfume bottle-shaped selfie cam, Sony has made the new KW1 compact official.
You know what they say: see a need, fill a need. Or, in the case of Sony's upcoming perfume bottle-shaped selfie camera, "see a fad, create a product." We assume that's written somewhere in the internal memo that first gave life to the camera you see above, a seemingly very real and definitely very strange camera that trusted sources tell Sony Alpha Rumors will be one of the first to feature Sony's revolutionary curved sensor.