South Korean giant Samsung has announced a new image sensor for smartphones. The company has claimed that it has the smallest pixel size in the industry. Samsung has earlier introduced 0.8µm pixels on its 48- and 64 megapixel sensors , that has seen a widespread adoption from the Chinese smartphone makers through 2019. The south Korean giant is now producing the world’s first image sensor with 0.7µm pixels. The new one is known as the ISOCELL Slim GH1 which is a 43.7 megapixel sensor that is designed to offer high resolution in a small physical size.
Samsung has said that it offers the optimum solution for slim full-display devices and suggested that it is intended for selfie cameras that the company currently offers a 32 megapixel 0.8µm sensor that is often used that way. People who have a knowledge about camera sensors, will be able to say that small pixel size is traditionally considered a bad thing as each photoside has less light gathering ability and runs a higher risk of introducing noise. But these high resolution phone sensors work a little differently.
In case of low light situations, they combine four pixels together which in this case should produce a 10.9 megapixel image with the light sensitivity of 1.4µ pixels which is still not huge but is reasonably large in terms of smartphone standards. In long term practice, pixel and resolution are not the most important factors when it comes to overall smartphone photo quality. It can be seen that some of the best phone cameras use the regular 12 megapixel sensors.
But it is found that for mid-range devices, such small-pixel sensors can deliver a lot of detail in good light without the excess noise that the users could expect in low light. Samsung says that it expects ISOCELL Slim GH1 to go in to mass production by the end of 2019 so that it can make its way in to the smartphones by early 2020.
Photo Credits: Wired
