If the phone had two cameras spaced some distance apart then you could use stereo vision algorithms to get a similar result. Maybe it would be possible to put

If the phone had two cameras spaced some distance apart then you could use stereo vision algorithms to get a similar result. Maybe it would be possible to put an infrared laser on a phone, similar to the Kinect, but I expect that power consumption would become an issue (although if it's only in a momentary blast it might be feasible). There are other possible methods, such as the "photo popup" created at CMU some years ago, but these rely heavily upon "dodgy heuristics" and often fail to give a good result.