Samsung is the giant manufacturer from South Korea.
Towering most others in the mobile industry, the company isn't just selling mobile devices under its own brand, but also mobile components.
Besides the high-end phones that compare to no other than Apple iPhones, Samsung also produces hardware components that go into its phones and competitors. And among the components, include camera sensors.
Before progressing to fulfill its dreams, like creating a 600MP camera sensor that can rival the human eyes, the company was the first to create a 200MP camera sensor, the ISOCELL HP1.
After unveiling 6 chips capable of using its 200MP sensors, the company has upgraded its 200MP to become increasingly smaller.
This is because the sensor is just 0.56μm pixel.
According to Samsung on its announcement, the ISOCELL image sensor is the industry's smallest.
What the company did, was taking the ISOCELL HP1, and enhanced it with Samsung's Super QPD auto-focus system, which uses a single lens over four adjacent pixels to identify phase differences in vertical and horizontal angles.
The ISOCELL HP3 supports 8K video recording at 30fps, and 4K videos at 120fps. Working in tandem with the new Super QPD tech, Samsung claims this image sensor is capable of movie-like cinematic quality.
Samsung also brings Smart-ISO Pro, which brings together data from low, mid, and high ISO modes for improved HDR imagery, with support for more than 4 trillion colors (14-bit depth), which is 64x better than the ISOCELL HP1.
But the main advantage of this ISOCELL HP3 over its ISOCELL HP1 predecessor, is its size.
Samsung is "shrinking things down" to create ISOCELL HP3 that is 12% ISOCELL HP1.
The new #Samsung 200MP #ISOCELL HP3 image sensor packs 200 million pixels into an extremely compact form factor along with fast & accurate auto-focusing and 64x more color. Find out how we’re helping keep smartphones slim without sacrificing quality.https://t.co/XIgPXZC1Nh pic.twitter.com/yVhV2yq4XD
— Samsung Semiconductor US (@SamsungSemiUS) June 23, 2022
While shrinking something that is already the size of micrometers may seem nothing, but this makes the ISOCELL HP3 to have a significantly reduced size.
For example, its 1/1.4-inch sensor is 20% smaller than its predecessor.
This huge drop in size allows Samsung, and other companies that wish to use the sensor to build phones that have less pronounced camera bumps.
“Samsung has continuously led the image sensor market trend through its technology leadership in high resolution sensors with the smallest pixels,” said JoonSeo Yim, Executive Vice President of Sensor Business Team at Samsung Electronics.
“With our latest and upgraded 0.56μm 200MP ISOCELL HP3, Samsung will push on to deliver epic resolutions beyond professional levels for smartphone camera users.”