Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a patent application from Apple that relates to camera modules for Apple Watch that resides under the display for photography, Face ID and face and object tracking.

Apple Watch Camera System

Apple's invention relates to integrating a camera module into an electronic device, such as Apple Watch, behind a display panel and/or a display PCB. For example, a camera module may be integrated into an electronic device using a front-crystal (FC) integration or the display. For example, a camera module may be assembled into the FC or the display so that the camera module resides on the display.

As another example, a camera module may be integrated into an electronic device using a housing-side integration. For example, a camera module may be fixedly attached to the housing of the electronic device and compressed against an alert bracket via a bracket so that the camera module resides at a fixed position within the electronic device.

In some aspects, a camera module may be placed within a corner of the electronic device. The display in front of the camera module may optionally maintain emissive pixelation such that the camera module is hidden behind the display panel. In some aspects, the display region above the camera module may include removed pixelation such as a hole or notch in the display panel. In at least these configurations, the camera module may be positioned along a center axis of the electronic device for symmetrical aesthetics.

In some aspects, an electronic device may include a camera module positioned behind an emissive display hiding the camera module to attain improved aesthetics and for better fit and configurations.

Some display panels may be very opaque allowing little light to pass therethrough to the camera module. A display panel may include a high light transmission region (e.g., an enhanced light transmission region) for increasing light transmission to the camera module without compromising the entire display panel. The high light transmission region may include a hole punch through the display panel (e.g., a pin-hole sized hole punch), a notch, or a region with low pixel count or routing density.

The size of the high light transmission region may depend on several camera module parameters including field-of-view, entrance pupil size and position, lens barrel dimensions, F number, and the like. The high light transmission region may be co-designed with the camera module parameters to enable a smaller high light transmission region and better camera module performance.

As shown in Apple's patent FIG. 2 below, the electronic device (Apple Watch #100) may include a camera module #202, a bracket #204, one or more camera electrical traces #206 attached to one or more camera electrical connections #208, one or more device electrical traces #212 attached to one or more device electrical connections #210, and an alert bracket #214. The camera module may be used for photography to capture images for viewing by a person. 

A second camera may be a machine vision camera module (e.g., in addition to a photography camera module, as an alternative to a photography camera module).

A machine vision camera module may be smaller than a photography camera module and may captures images that are not meant to be seen by a human and instead are processed by one or more machine learning algorithms. For example, a machine vision camera module may capture monochromic images and/or infrared images for processing face identification, authentication, and/or object/face tracking.

As shown in Apple's patent FIG. 14 above, the electronic device #1400 may include a housing #1402, a display panel #1404, and a display region cutout #1406. The display region cutout may be a high light transmission region. The display region cutout may have a circular shape to match a circular shape of one or more lenses of the camera module. A camera module may be positioned behind the display panel and directly beneath the display region cutout.

Lastly, Apple's patent FIG. 3 illustrates a cross-sectional view of at least some components for front-crystal integration of a camera module into an electronic device across an A-A plane.

A few other Apple Watch patents that we have on record: 01, 02 and 03.

Apple's listed Inventors

• Yoshikazu Shinohara: Optics engineering manager
• Ryan Dunn: Senior Engineering Manager, Camera Architecture & Systems
• Noah Bedard: Prototyping Engineer