An international team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles and the Braunschweig University of Technology in Germany has developed an approach to enhance the sensitivity of smartphone-based fluorescence microscopes by ten-fold compared to previously reported mobile phone-based handheld microscopes. This is an important development toward the use of mobile phones for advanced microscopic investigation of samples, sensing of disease biomarkers, tracking of chronic conditions, and molecular diagnostics and testing in general.