Samsung’s 100 Megapixel Camera is Coming!
Staff Writer / 10-02-2020 / News
It’s no secret that the camera has always been the smartphone’s strongest selling point. With the growing popularity of social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, users have become photo-centric, constantly chasing after the best cameras to produce the best pictures to share with their followers. In fact, digital camera sales have taken a dip since the rise of the camera phone, which allows users to carry one device that performs many functions rather than purchasing a specific device for each of their needs.
The first phone with a built-in camera was manufactured by Samsung in the year 2000. This digital camera could take up 20 photos at 350 000-pixels, or 0.35-megapixels, but you could only access your photos by connecting to a computer. By the year 2003, camera phones were becoming more popular with better specs and lower prices.
In 2004, Sprint released a phone with a 1.3-megapixel camera that could capture images, share them wirelessly and even allowed you to print them. Finnish manufacturer Nokia jumped on the bandwagon in 2005 and released a 2 megapixel camera on their N90 model. Shortly after, the world was introduced to Sony Ericsson, whose aim was to steal the crown from Nokia. They adopted Sony’s Cybershot digital camera branding, which earned them first place in the camera phone market. The Sony Ericsson K800i was released in 2006 with a 3.2-megapixel camera that had auto focus, image stability and a Xenon flash.
The baton was passed back to Samsung when they released the first ever 5-megapixel camera and then the 8 megapixel camera in 2008. The smartphone camera race continued, with Samsung appearing to be the winner with their release of the M8910 Pixon 12, which had a 12MP camera, in 2009. However, they were soon bested by Nokia’s N8 in 2010 and then the 16MP Sony Ericsson S006 that came at the end of 2010.
Fast forward a few years and Samsung are at it again! To maintain their position in the market, the technology giant has decided to partner up with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi to create the world’s first 108-megapixel camera. Current high-end smartphones typically host cameras with between 12 and 16-megapixel resolutions, so a 108 megapixel camera would be a massive improvement to the conventional smartphone camera.
The Isocell Bright HMX is designed to shoot incredibly detailed photos and is said to be comparable to a top DSLR camera. You can expect to capture better low-lit images as this camera will merge pixels to absorb more light. In terms of video recording, no smartphone camera will have better capabilities than this one. It will be capable of shooting up to 6K resolution at 30 frames per second which is very impressive compared to the 4K resolution at 60 frames per second limit of other smartphones.
It’s been predicted that Xiaomi will release a smartphone with a similar camera before Samsung does, and even though Samsung has announced that production on these camera lenses begun at the end of August, they’ve remained tight-lipped about when we’ll be seeing a device with the 108-megapixel camera on the shelves.