This week, Samsung LSI introduced a brand new digicam sensor that seemingly is pushing the boundaries of decision inside a cell phone. The new S5KHP1, or just HP1 sensor, pushes the decision above 200 megapixels, nearly doubling that of what’s presently being deployed in up to date {hardware} in in the present day’s telephones.
The new sensor is attention-grabbing as a result of it marks an implementation of a brand new binning mechanism, past the presently deployed Quad-Bayer (4:1 pixel binning) or “Nonapixel” (9:1 binning), however a brand new “ChameleonCell” binning mechanism that’s each in a position to make use of 4:1 binning in a 2×2 construction, in addition to 16:1 binning in a 4×4 construction.
We’ve been accustomed to Samsung’s 108MP sensors for some time now as they’ve seen adoption for over two years each in Samsung Mobile telephones in addition to in Xiaomi units, though in barely completely different sensor configurations. The most acquainted implementation is probably going the HM1 and HM3 modules within the S20 Ultra and S21 Ultra sequence, which implement the “Nonapixel” 9:1 pixel binning method to combination 9 pixels into 1 for normal 12MP captures in most situations.
One drawback with the 9:1 scheme was that you just’re successfully having to enlarge 3x in relation between the 2 decision modes, and for units such because the S21 Ultra, this was principally a redundant mode of functioning because the telephone had a devoted 3x telephoto module to realize an analogous pixel spatial decision, at a bigger pixel dimension.
8K video recording was a use-case for when the native 108MP decision made sense, nonetheless even right here the issue is that the native decision is much above the required 33MP for 8K video, which means the telephone needed to endure a really massive discipline of view crop because it didn’t help decision tremendous sampling down from 108MP to 33MP.
| Sensor Solution Comparisons | |||||||||
| Optics | Sensor | ||||||||
| 35mm eq. FL |
FoV (H/V/D) |
Aperture – Airy Disk |
Resolution | Pixel Pitch |
Pixel Res. |
Sensor Size |
|||
| HP1
(Theoretical) |
24.17 | 71.2° 56.5° 83.7° |
~f/1.9 – 1.15µm |
201.3M native (16384 x 12288) 50.3M 2×2 bin 12.6M 4×4 bin |
0.64µm
1.28µm 2.56µm |
15.2″
30.4″ 60.9″ |
1 / 1.22″ 10.48mm x 7.86mm 82.46mm² |
||
| HM3
(S21 Ultra) |
24.17 | 71.2° 56.5° 83.7° |
f/1.8 – 1.09µm |
108.0M native (12000 x 9000) 12.0M 3×3 bin |
0.8µm
2.4µm |
21.4″
64.1″ |
1 / 1.33″ 9.60mm x 7.20mm 69.12mm² |
||
| GN2
(Mi 11 Ultra) |
23.01 | 73.9° 58.9° 86.5° |
f/1.95 – 1.18µm |
49.9M native (8160 x 6120) 12.5MP 2×2 bin |
1.4µm
2.8µm |
32.6″
65.2″ |
1 / 1.12″ 11.42mm x 8.56mm 97.88mm² |
||
| S21U 3x Telephoto |
70.04
(4:3) |
27.77° 21.01° 34.34° (4:3) |
f/2.4 – 1.46µm |
10.87M native (3976 x 2736) 9.99M 4:Three crop 12M scaled |
1.22µm | 27.4″ | 1 / 2.72″ 4.85mm x 3.33mm 16.19mm² |
||
| S21U 10x Telephoto |
238.16
(4:3) |
8.31° 6.24° 10.38° (4:3) |
f/4.9 – 5.97µm |
10.87M native (3976 x 2736) 9.99M 4:Three crop 12M scaled |
1.22µm | 8.21″ | 1 / 2.72″ 4.85mm x 3.33mm 16.19mm² |
||
The new HP1 sensor now has two binning modes: 4:1 and 16:1. The 4:1 mode successfully turns the 201MP native decision to 50MP captures, and when cropping right into a 12.5MP view body, would end in a 2x magnification which might be extra consistent with what we’re used to in Quad-Bayer sensors. In reality, the outcomes right here can be just about consistent with Quad-Bayer sensors because the native color filter of the HP1 continues to be solely 12.5MP, which means a single R/G/B filter web site covers 16 native pixels.
A 4:1 / 2×2 binning mode is extra helpful, as typically the standard right here continues to be glorious and permits cellular distributors to help high-quality 2x magnification seize modes with out the necessity of an additional digicam module, it’s one thing that’s being utilized by a…
