Samsung at this time has introduced a brand-new flagship sensor within the type of the ISOCELL GN1. The new sensor is seemingly a follow-up to the 108MP ISOCELL HMX and HM1 sensors that we’ve seen employed by Xiaomi units and the Galaxy S20 Ultra.
The large adjustments within the new GN1 is that it makes use of are totally different optical system to the prevailing bigger megapixel sensors. It’s solely a bit lower than half the decision at a most of 50 megapixels, nonetheless the per-pixel pitch grows from 0.8µm to 1.2µm.
It appears that Samsung’s most important rationale to develop to a bigger pixel pitch wasn’t simply the per-pixel elevated gentle gathering means, however fairly the enablement to re-introduce full sensor dual-pixel phase-detection. The current 108MP sensors which have been out out there have been utilizing 2×1 distributed on-chip lens part detection autofocus pixels on the sensor, with the autofocus efficiency not been practically as performant and a dual-pixel PD resolution. In concept, the GN1 utilizing dual-pixel PD pixels signifies that it makes use of pairs of 0.6µm x 1.2µm picture websites.
The GN1 can also be the primary sensor to pair the dual-pixel expertise with a quad-bayer color filter array, which Samsung calls Tetracell. In impact, the 50MP sensor will natively bin 2×2 pixels to provide a 12.5MP picture with efficient pixel pitches of two.4µm. Interestingly, Samsung additionally talks about offering software program algorithms to have the ability to produce 100MP photographs through the use of info from every particular person photodiode – which all seems like pixel-shift tremendous decision strategies.
The dimension of the sensor stays at a big 1/1.33” – in essence it’s most corresponding to Huawei’s present 50MP sensor that’s discovered within the P40 collection telephones – with the addition of Dual Pixel PD.
The sensor nonetheless helps 8K30 video recording, however we hope it’s capable of obtain this with a smaller picture crop in comparison with the present HM1 implementation within the S20 Ultra.
These new era sensors are extraordinarily difficult for distributors to correctly use – moreover the elevated computational workload to truly use the total resolutions (the discount from 108MP to 50MP will assist there), there’s additionally the problem of offering enough optics that may reap the benefits of the decision. It appears the GN1 right here is a little more cheap in its calls for, apart from its sheer giant dimension.
