Next-Gen Camera Phones
Samsung Electronics will soon launch the LTE smartphone “GALAXY S4 Zoom,” which offers a 10x zoom lens coupled with a 16 megapixel image sensor.
The smartphone can catch a split second due to the function of the “Zoom Ring,” that works just by turning the camera barrel, and provides the same feeling as an analog camera with a button and a firm grip. Due to the ultra high speed of LTE services, users can share photos anywhere and anytime instantly.
Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics’ Image Development Team successfully developed “ISOCELL,” which is an image censor that can drastically improve a camera’s resolution.
“Next year will mark the beginning of the 20 megapixel camera phone generation. In the long run, we will be able to accomplish not only 40-50 megapixels, but as much as 100 megapixels only found in the human eye,” said Director Lim Joon-seo of the Samsung Electronics Image Development Team.
This is an ambitious plan. The Samsung Electronics Galaxy S4 features a mere 13 megapixel CMOS CIS. A smartphone with a 20 megapixel camera will be released next year. How much more will be possible? Can smartphones get up to the predicted 100 megapixels?
It is because of the recently developed “ISOCELL” that the Samsung Electronics Image Development Team can dream of 100 megapixel image censors.
The ISOCELL has high expectations from the Samsung Electronics System LSI Business Department, enough to be considered as its next growth engine. This technology alters a censor’s structure to maximize the use of light collected in the CMOS image censor.
Image censors developed so far have evolved to minimize color mixture and increase reception in order to receive as much light as possible in the smallest chip size possible. However, censors over 20 megapixels have extreme light interference and inevitable noise. Once these types of flat structure image censors reached their limit, the ISOCELL was developed with a 3D pixel structure.