Glasses-Free 3D on iPhone!?! For Real.

Recently I modded my iPhone 15 Pro for glasses-free 3D, though haven’t had the chance to write a proper review. Surprisingly, I was able to buy what essentially looks like a screen-protector from overseas and slap it on the iPhone and it’s 3D. No joke. This does not need glasses, it’s called glasses-free or auto-stereoscopic, similar to the Nintendo 3DS, but way better. Same general concept, sending some pixels to the left eye and some to the right eye, so you get a full 3D image with depth without needing 3D glasses or a VR headset. Sadly, it’s almost impossible to capture a good video of the effect, though I tried anyhow so you can at least see I’m not taking a piss here.

Here’s also a 2D photo which captures the picture quality a bit better, but still not quite. It retains the quality of the iPhone screen, though in 3D mode you lose some resolution and brightness, but otherwise appears similar to a 4K image, just dimmer than usual. When not playing 3D content, it looks just like the phone does normally, and I did not notice any issues with brightness or quality of text or anything like that.

I can say this, the 3D effect is FOR REAL!!! It really does work. Granted, there are some high-end glasses-free displays and tablets on the market that do a better job, but these can typically cost $500 and up. Probably the gold standard is the Acer SpatialLabs, and it starts at $1,000. The screen protector I’m reviewing here was $99, which sounds expensive, but is extremely cheap for what it does. With it you can view 3D photos and videos, even Spatial photos you take right on the iPhone. You can also load 3D movies in SBS format (for example 3D Blu-Ray rips) and play them on the device. I saw there was a Unity plug-in for creating games, but I did not get a chance to test it. However, I did watch a few 1080P 3D film trailers and the quality was great. One thing to note is that the phone does need to be held at a certain distance to get the best 3D effect (slightly less than arm’s length). Thankfully, though, if you go outside the range (either closer or farther) it gracefully falls back to 2D without artifacts. I also rendered some stereo content in Blender at 4K and the quality is amazing. As I stated, there are actual 3D solutions you can buy today, such as the Leia Lume Pad 2 or Acer Predator Spatial Labs, but these are more expensive. For this price, and the fact that it works on a iPhone, there is really nothing else like it on the market, bar none.

The site I bought this from is called SpatialGlass, though it seems it might be sold out currently (available for pre-order). Full disclosure, I am in some 3D communities with the owner of that site (which is how I found out about it) but I’m not getting paid for this review or any purchases. This is my honest opinion. Next I want to toy with the Unity SDK and see how it works for real-time 3D content. I haven’t used Unity in years, so not sure how long that will take. Will also inquire about using other engines and APIs other than Unity, since you might be aware I’m developing my own custom engine. At least for now, though, this 3D mod has good support for stereo photos and videos, even ones captured directly on the phone. So seems well worth looking into if you’re at all interested in 3D and own an iPhone 15 Pro or better.