Fear not pixel peepers, the megapixel war is still alive and well. In the smartphone market, that is. Motorola has announced it will be releasing a smartphone with a 200MP sensor inside.
In the announcement, Motorola says (machine-translated) ‘A new benchmark for image experience beyond parameters opens the era of 200-megapixel mobile photography.’ According to the announcement, the expected release will be this coming July. Motorola doesn’t specify any other details about the forthcoming device, nor specifies any additional details about the 200MP sensor it will used. But, considering Motorola has used Samsung sensors in the past, it’s very likely the camera will be powered by Samsung’s 200MP ISOCELL HP1 sensor.
Announced back in September 2021 alongside the ISOCELL GN5, the ISOCELL HP1 uses 0.64µm pixels and a new pixel-binning technology it refers to as ChameleonCell. Depending on the lighting of the scene being captured, the HP1 can output full-pixel resolution or two different pixel-binned options: 4-to-1 or 16-to-1. In its 16-to-1 pixel-binning mode, the HP1 effectively becomes a 12.5MP sensor with 2.56μm-equivalent pixels.
Autofocus on the HP1 uses Samsung’s Double Super Phase Detection technology that uses microlenses covering two autofocus pixels to make focus adjustments on the fly. As its name suggests, the Double Super Phase Detection technology uses twice the number of autofocus pixels as Samsung’s existing Super Phase Detection technology.
It’s possible, of course, that Motorola is using a different 200MP sensor. But if that does end up being the case, it’ll be a sensor we haven’t yet heard about from the usual suspects in the image sensor market, namely OmniVision, Sony and others.