It has been a while since Samsung announced its 200MP sensor and it’s highly likely that the South Korean company’s next premium phone, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, will boast this camera. It’s apparently not the same as the HP1 and HP3 versions that the company has already announced and there were some speculations that the 200MP sensor meant for the S23 Ultra would be really big but that seemingly is not the case.
Smartphone vendors have a size limitation that prevents them from equipping their phones with very large sensors. In recent times, we have seen companies employ a technique called pixel binning whereby smaller individual pixels are combined together to act as one big pixel and churn out more detailed images.
For instance, even though the S22 Ultra rocks a 108MP camera, it takes 12MP images by default. Similarly, the new Apple iPhone 14 Pro which comes with a 48MP main sensor produces 12MP shots and this is achieved by combining data from 1.22μm photosites to deliver images comparable to a sensor with 2.44μm pixels.
Such tricks can only get you so far though and at some point, physics will catch up and camera sensors will have to get bigger to accommodate more megapixels. So, while it’s unlikely that the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s monster 200MP sensor will be the same size as the S22 Ultra’s 108MP unit, the good news is that the increase will almost be insignificant.
Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 200MP camera will pack more megapixels while remaining largely the same size
This scoop comes from esteemed leaker Ice Universe who says he is 100 percent sure that the S23 Ultra’s main 200MP camera will be 1/1.3 inches in size and it will have 0.6μm sized pixels and a larger aperture of f/1.7 for getting in more light. For reference, the S22 Ultra’s 108MP sensor is 1/1.33 inches with 0.8µm pixels and an f/1.8 aperture.
He adds that it will only be a little bigger than the iPhone 14 Pro’s 48MP main camera which he says is also 1/1.3 inches. There is a chance that it will be smaller than the sensors on some competing Android phones that will be released next year. He might be referring to phones that may use 1-inch sensors.
As has been evident by its recent attempts to poke fun at Apple, Samsung is more focused on maintaining its lead over the iPhone maker. As Apple and Google have demonstrated, higher resolutions are not the end all and be all, but they are generally better for pro users as they give them more options to work with.
The megapixel count is still viewed by many buyers as a benchmark number for deciding how good a camera is. At the end of the day, there are many factors that influence image quality other than megapixels, including the sensor size because a larger sensor can fit more pixels and capture more details.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is rumored to retain the 10MP telephoto sensors of the S22 Ultra with 10x and 3x optical zoom. Nothing is known about the ultrawide camera. The company is also expected to use software smarts to help the S23 Ultra deliver significantly better images and videos. It’s safe to assume that it will outshine most top camera phones of 2022.
