Will Samsung do the crazy thing with ‘resolution’ on smartphones?

It seems that Samsung realized that ‘quantity is not equal to quality’, so it decided to slow down with the megapixel race.
Recently, Samsung is working towards increasing the megapixel resolution. Because of that, we have seen smartphones with 64-megapixel and 108-megapixel cameras in their devices. However, as experience on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra shows, the large number of megapixels does not offer an advantage over other competitors. And in the end, this flagship couldn’t be the best smartphone with a camera.

Samsung has an unexpected move Photo: @Pixabay. It seems that the company has realized that “quantity is not equal to quality” should decide to slow down with the megapixel race. Recently, famous leaker Ice Universe announced that Samsung now intends to return to another “rationality”, and will stop blindly chasing big numbers. Clearly, we’re talking about the fact that the company is recklessly stopping the megapixel-resolution race. “I heard some news that Samsung smartphones are actively changing the camera sensor. It will return to reasonable, instead of blindly large numbers,” Ice Universe stated. In fact, Samsung admits that quality is not at the megapixel count. Priorities will be the tradeoff between the size and resolution of each pixel. And the first result of this approach that we saw in the Samsung ISOCELL GN2 sensor; in which the company offers a record large sensor size of 1 / 1.12 inch; No frills on the megapixel count with just 50 megapixels. Photo: @Pixabay. After the shocking information above, it is still unclear what the fate of the 200 megapixel sensor on a smartphone with up to 6 cameras, with a dual selfie camera and a homegrown chip will be. On the other hand, there are also rumors that, Samsung has set itself a goal of delivering an insane 600MP sensor. The 600 MP sensor that Samsung has developed seems to have a pixel density of 0.8 µm and a size of about 1 / 0.57 inches. So the result is more work the company has to deal with as the sensor will take up 12% of the smartphone’s area, and it will also result in a 22mm protrusion. The Galaxy Note20 is 8.3 mm thick, which means the 22 mm camera bump will make the phone look too out of date. Photo: @Pixabay. With these changing priorities, it remains to be seen whether this will affect the development of the aforementioned sensors in the near term. In July 2019, CEO of Zeiss, Mr. Michael Kaschke made the point that, the race of “dots” on smartphones is meaningless. Because according to him, “the sensor on a smartphone is so small that mobile photography will never be able to overcome some of the limits such as processing speed, signal ratio, noise … and increasing the number of” dots. “Not the right solution in this regard, even a stumbling block”. In fact, the higher the resolution of the sensor, the smaller the individual pixels, and the more difficult it is to illuminate them entirely. The result is that the image will be noisy, which the algorithms must try to limit to reduce this situation. For Kaschke, a 40 MP sensor is more than enough for a smartphone, let alone 64 MP. Therefore, increasing the number of “dots” will not bring any benefit. Photo: @Pixabay. However, it is undeniable that the introduction of the smartphone is one of the most remarkable strides in the history of the technology industry. It is not simply a pocket communication device but gradually meets all human information needs. Photography is also an equally important part. It creates many new needs such as sharing daily photos, taking selfies, video calling. Smartphone photography is gradually asserting itself with a steady decline in sales of travel cameras. According to data from GfK, Canon’s travel camera revenue is down 2% per year due to the replacement of smartphones.