Phones Can See Infrared

If you shoot an infrared beam directly into your phones camera, the otherwise invisible light renders as a purplish beam in the phones display. There are not many practical applications here, except perhaps allowing you to confirm if your TVs remote control is indeed running low on batteries. This happens because most digital camera sensors have the ability to pick up frequencies of light invisible to the human eye. But sometimes they will (imprecisely) translate these frequencies into the displays image. We were able to recreate this glitch on a variety of modern Android devices (the Galaxy S5 and S6, Moto X, One M9, and Nexus 7) and even on one old-school Samsung flip phone. However, we were not able to see the beam of light render on an iPhone 6 or iPad Air 2. This is probably because these devices have superior IR Cut Filters, which theoretically make for better photos.