It's much more affordable, too, since you don't need carefully polished, difficult-to-manufacture glass. You could make the metalenses in the same factories that produce semiconductors.

This doesn't mean that you'll be shooting gallery-worthy photos with your phone in the near future. While this is a breakthrough in using the technology for visible spectrum light, Popular Science says that the metalenses used in testing were only designed to refract light in specific colors. You'd clearly need a much wider color gamut for this to work. Still, it's a start. The scientists see a day when your phone camera can take professional-grade photos, and where dedicated cameras don't need big, heavy lenses to achieve top-notch results.