Smartphone cameras are a big deal because many people rely on their phone as the main camera in their life. Today Sony announced that it's working to push the smartphone camera game forward with a new sensor that has the industry's highest pixel count.
Sony today announced the IMX586 stacked CMOS image sensor for smartphone cameras. This sensor offers 48 effective megapixels, which is achieved thanks to a pixel size of 0.8 μm. Sony touts that while sometimes having such small pixels can result in bad light collecting efficiency per pixel and a drop in sensitivity, its new sensor was designed with techniques that improve light collection efficiency and photoelectric conversion efficiency to give it high sensitivity and a high saturation signal level.
This new IMX586 sensor also includes a Quad Bayer filter array where the adjacent 2x2 pixels come in the same color. And in low light situations, it adds the four adjacent pixels, which raises the sensitivity level to the same as 1.6 μm pixels.
Finally, Sony claims that its new sensor offers dynamic range that's four times greater than its previous products.
Samples of the Sony IMX586 will begin shipping in September 2018 for 3,000 JPY ($27 USD). This sounds like a pretty impressive camera sensor, and with 48 effective megapixels, it should allow you to crop an image and retain quality rather than having to use digital zoom to get closer to your subject.
