South-Korean tech giant Samsung has revealed the details on a new 200MP camera sensor for smartphones.
The ISOCELL HP3, while not the company’s first 200MP camera sensor, offers significant upgrades over the first-generation ISOCELL HP1 200MP camera, including the smallest pixels Samsung have ever fitted to a sensor ever.
Whilst the HP1 is yet to appear on a commercial smartphone, Samsung is already planning mass production of the HP3, and has begun sending out samples.
The HP3 will feature pixels of just 0.56 microns, with the resulting sensor format only being 1/1.14-inches. As a result, brands will have no trouble keeping their phones slim even with heavy duty camera hardware.
Other upgrades include the new Tetra2 pixel binning technology, which creates a large super pixel out of 16 adjacent pixels, for better capturing of light and producing better colour and detail in photos.
Auto-focusing is also getting an upgrade with Samsung adopting Super QPD, which equips every pixel with auto-focusing capabilities, using a single lens over four-adjacent pixels that is able to identify differences in phase both horizontally and vertically.
The new sensor will also be capable of native 8K recording at 30FPS, while 4K is boosted up to 120FPS.
While there has been no information regarding when the new sensor will be fitted to a phone, there are a few devices due for soon release that are expected to boast a 200MP sensor.
Motorola are due to formally announce a new flagship that is expected to have a 200MP sensor, as well as the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, while the Xiaomi 12 Ultra had picture leaked earlier this year, showing a three-camera module with a 200MP sensor.
The new devices are most likely using Samsung’s first 200MP sensor, the HP1 however. The HP3 is much more likely to surface with phones released towards the end of the year, or early next year alongside the anticipated Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
