This tiny lens turns your smartphone into a polarizing microscope – and it works with both iPhones and Android phones, too
- iMicro Q3p is a microscope lens the size of a fingertip
- Attaches to your smartphone’s camera for 1200x magnification
- It’s available now on Kickstarter for just CA$55
Fitting a microscope in your pocket is generally a bit of a challenge, unless that microscope is the iMicro Q3p. The Q3p, the latest in a six-year line of fingertip microscopes funded on Kickstarter, is a small lens that attaches to your smartphone’s camera, giving you professional magnification in your pocket.
Like the iMicro Q3 announced late last year, the Q3p is powerful enough to view objects at the submicron level – or less than one micron. For reference, the average human hair measures 70 microns, while a red blood cell measures eight microns. That makes the Q3p an incredibly powerful optical tool.
By combining the optical magnification with the digital magnification of your smartphone’s screen, it is also capable of displaying objects up to 1200x their actual size. That’s significantly more than you can achieve with any of the best macro lenses, or with the 40x microscopic sensor on the Realme GT 2 Pro.
What the Q3p crucially wins this time is a polarizer. As with the previous Q2p, this improves the contrast and color of images viewed through it. It is especially effective when it comes to viewing the structures of crystals and minerals. Because these materials are birefringent, their visual properties depend on the direction in which light travels across them. You can adjust this with the polarizer.
By adding a low-profile polarizer to the most powerful iMicro yet, the Q3p becomes an even more versatile imaging package. Remarkably, it measures just half a centimeter, weighs less than 0.5 grams, and costs just CA$55 (about $39). back on Kickstarter. That makes it orders of magnitude more portable and cheaper than a professional desktop microscope.
Look closer
The applications for a fingertip microscope are many and diverse. From science classrooms to industrial environments, the ability to view and measure polarized images at high resolution and 1200x magnification has potential in education, research and commerce. The ability to do this with minimal expenditure – and using the smartphone you already have in your pocket – democratizes that potential.
Like the original iMicro launched in 2018, the Q3p sticks to your smartphone using thousands of nano-sized suction cups, which work like a gecko’s foot. This means you can mount the best camera phones on it, regardless of brand or model, without the need for additional mounts or housings. It can also be removed and reused without leaving any residue, allowing multiple users to share the same Q3p lens.
Also available with the Q3p is a focus stand. Created based on feedback from previous backers, the stand provides more detailed control when focusing on objects at high magnification. It’s cleverly stored together with the Q3p in a neat card-sized package, making it highly portable and genuinely useful.
This includes the kit’s inclusion of a micrometer, which allows users to make accurate scale measurements of magnified objects when calibrated with the i-Seeing app. While it may not replace the desktop microscopes found in professional labs, the Q3p, with their high-quality optics and precision controls, offers comparable performance at a much lower price, with a form factor that is a lot more convenient.