It’s been a long time since smartphones came in all sorts of unique shapes and sizes. In the late 2000s, as the first-ever Android phones burst onto the scene, devices with QWERTY keyboards, square displays, and even hidden controllers were all commonplace. These days, outside of foldables, practically every smartphone is an extra-tall rectangle made out of metal and glass, with just a handful of smaller design flourishes used to differentiate between brands.
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By far, it’s the modern camera bump that’s used to mark the difference between, say, the OnePlus 12 and the Pixel 9 Pro. Camera bumps weren’t always around, but for the better part of the last decade, nearly every smartphone, no matter the price, has rocked a couple of lenses sticking out from the back of the phone. However, I’m convinced that the majority of affordable Android devices — specifically non-flagships — don’t actually require a large module to fit in a modern chassis, and we’d all be better off with flatter, potentially bulkier products.
The Pixel 9a might finally drop its camera bump
It’s a step in the right direction for phones that don’t need one
I’ve been thinking about camera bumps and the concept of value phones for the better part of a year. When I first got my hands on the Pixel 8a in May, the core hardware felt like an expected leap over its predecessor. While I quite liked the rounded corners and improved performance of Google’s latest A-series device, it also kept plenty of the quirks of the Pixel 7a before it, including a relatively-slim camera bump wrapped around the back of the device. Considering every A-series Pixel has had something protruding from the back glass, I didn’t think much of it until months after its release.
That’s when we first started to see leaks for next year’s budget handset from Google. The Pixel 9a seems to be leaving the camera bar look in the past, a first for the series in nearly four years. Rather than a band of metal wrapping around the back of the phone, every leak for the Pixel 9a has shown a pair of lenses that appear aligned with the rest of the device, perhaps with just a slight ring around the module designed to protect from scratches and other potential damage. In other words, a phone without a camera bump.
Obviously, there’s plenty we don’t know about Google’s plans for this phone. It’s possible that the entire chassis is thicker than the 8.9mm Pixel 8a, allowing for this new design. It’s also possible that Google, in an effort to achieve this look, is swapping to smaller, lower quality sensors than what’s been in its last couple of A-series phones. Frankly, though, I don’t think any of that’s true. I think this is another sign that the Pixel 8a’s camera bump — like many phones well below that $600 threshold — were made that way purely for decoration, not utility.
A leaked Pixel 9a prototype with a flush camera module.
Google’s not alone here. Looking over other budget releases from the year, it’s clear that practically all of them relied on their camera modules to differentiate their style within the smartphone market, not to squeeze the best sensor into as tight a package as possible. The OnePlus 12R, as excellent a phone as it is for $500, takes fairly mediocre images, especially next to the more expensive — and similarly designed — OnePlus 12. Could we have seen a version of the 12R that didn’t have a large, circular disk on its back? Almost certainly, but then it wouldn’t match the look of its more powerful big brother.
An even more egregious example, in my eyes, is the Moto G Stylus. By far my least favorite phone of the year — of the ones I personally used as a daily driver, anyway — Motorola’s latest stylus-equipped device attempted to cosplay as a more premium device than its $400 price tag implied. And while nothing was more offensive than the buckets of ads injected into its build of Android, the embedded camera bump once again did not earn its presence, with photos I’d charitably describe as “just okay.” Instead, this design is almost certainly designed to mimic the look of the more premium Motorola Edge, which uses the same style of camera bump with a larger sensor and, presumably, better optics.
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Just like disguising plastic as glass or metal
Obviously, I’m oversimplifying things here. I’m not a smartphone designer, and I haven’t torn apart any of the devices I’ve highlighted. However, the Pixel 9a’s leaked design makes it painfully clear that, at the very least, many of these cheaper smartphones are sporting camera bumps purely to appear more premium than they really are. And, if that’s the case, we’re quite literally talking about OEMs utilizing worse designs in order to trick potential buyers.
The Moto G Stylus 5G is particularly guilty of this, actually. Its plastic frame is specifically designed to emulate brushed metal, complete with chamfered edges. In that isolated case, it’s hard to get mad at Motorola — if anything, dressing a $400 smartphone up like a more premium option is actually a smart way of delivering a more appealing product to consumers. There’s no downside to plastic looking like brushed metal; at the end of the day, it simply looks like a more expensive product to bystanders.
Unnecessary camera bumps, however, do the opposite. Much like throwing a low-res macro lens on the back of a phone to pad out its spec sheet — something OnePlus and Motorola have both been guilty of in the past — large camera bumps imply a certain level of shooting quality. These camera systems are so powerful, this design trend says, that we have to make our devices asymmetrical. You’ll thank us when you see your phone rocking back and forth on a desk, because that’s just how good these lenses are.
But that’s not true. Of these three phones, only the Pixel 8a took reliably good photos, and even then, its output is well behind both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 9. This is, effectively, a simple marketing gimmick, aimed at uninformed buyers in carrier stores who were just as likely to be tricked over megapixel counts a decade ago. Just look at the Redmagic 10 Pro for a counterexample. It managed to pack its own camera system into a flush 8.9mm chassis, the same thickness as the Pixel 8a, all while using a similarly-sized main sensor. I have a hard time believing Motorola couldn’t have done the same.
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Let’s leave camera bumps to the phones that need them
And get back to some more sensible smartphone design
None of this is to say that camera bumps don’t serve a specific purpose. Practically every modern Android flagship is using camera hardware that simply wouldn’t fit into the slimmer chassis most users have grown used to, especially when it comes to the actual optics in use. This also applies to foldables, which lack the higher quality levels of standard flagships, but are also operating with significantly less space. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold might hit 10.5mm in your pocket, but Google’s engineers only truly have 5.1mm on each side to work with.
When it comes to budget and midrange phones, though, I’m hoping the Pixel 9a brings some sanity back to how OEMs design their devices. We don’t need to trick consumers into thinking they have a better camera than they really do, nor do we need to unify every piece of our lineup, as Samsung has done with its most recent A-series designs. Until these cheaper devices can pack premium camera systems into their chassis, give me a completely flat profile every day of the week. At the very least, every OEM can be a little smarter about their bumps in the first place.
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