Samsung introduced its 200 MP camera sensor dubbed ISOCELL HP1 last year. And just a few months later, the giant sensor was spotted in the upcoming flagship Motorola Frontier . Here you can see the first pictures of the new megapixel king.
- Samsung’s 200 MP sensor has been spotted in a recent smartphone
- More megapixels mean more benefits – but also challenges
- Flexible pixel binning combines different amounts of pixels into a single pixel
Motorola’s new flagship, Frontier, could be the first smartphone with Samsung’s 200 MP sensor. The cell phone has now been leaked online and has a massive camera hump on the back. According to the photo, the sensor sits behind an f2.2 lens that is optically image stabilized. In addition to the 200-megapixel sensor, which can also be recognized as lettering, there will be other sensors that remain unknown so far.
What are the benefits of Samsung’s 200MP sensor for phones?
Technically speaking, the 200 MP Isocell HP sensor is 1/1.22 inch and has a pixel size of 0.64 μm – making it one of the largest camera sensors available in smartphones. However, it is surpassed by the recently leaked Sony IMX800 with 50MP resolution, which we may see in the Xiaomi 12 Ultra.
Samsung is flexing its megapixel muscles here and not focusing on how many millions more cameras there are. Instead, it highlights the various benefits of the sensor, which include two levels of pixel binning (combining pixels into one), which is said to produce brighter and sharper images.
With pixel binning technology, Isocell HP smartphones can convert 200 MP images into 50 megapixel images by combining four pixels into one. The next step would be capturing 16MP images by combining 16 neighboring pixels into a single, much more effective pixel and overall better image quality. This also applies to video recordings, where the full 8K and 4K resolution does not need to be cropped.
Perhaps the only downside to this huge sensor is the space it takes up on a smartphone. Because that leads to quite clumsy camera bumps like the Motorola Frontier and Xiaomi 12 Ultra. It is therefore up to the manufacturers to reduce the thickness of the upcoming smartphones to a minimum.
What do you think of the megapixel race in camera smartphones? Do you think pixel binning makes for better pictures or not?
