The iPhone 18's camera bump has three cameras and a sensor — a wide-angle lens, a main lens, a telephoto lens and a LiDAR scanner. None of them just look straight down. Each one needs a clear, cone-shaped sightline of open space in front of it, and if anything intrudes into that cone, even a little, it can shadow, blur or block the photo or the sensor reading.

That's why our kickstand has its signature slant. We mapped the cone from every single lens and sensor, then angled the kickstand's edge to route around all of them, so no camera or sensor is at risk of being blocked.

A straight edge — which is what we've seen on competitor kickstands — risks clipping a lens or sensor cone. Our slanted edge keeps every one of them clear.