The announcement of the Isocell HP1 is almost a year old, and this sensor will finally be on board a smartphone. It’s not a Samsung smartphone, but a Motorola one.
Samsung unveiled its first 200-megapixel smartphone camera sensor, Isocell HP1in September 2021. Samsung was supposed, on the Galaxy S23, use the Isocell HP1 among the first, but Motorola grilled them politeness. The Motorola Moto Edge X30 will soon be launched in China, it is precisely equipped with this sensor. Awaiting its release, the first camera shot of this phone has been revealed, giving us a glimpse of the image quality.
50 megapixels in a 12.5 megapixel photo thanks to the pixel binning
Chen Jin, Director of Motorola China, posted this photograph. This is a 50 megapixel image obtained with the Isocell HP1 sensor. This sensor can capture 200-megapixel full-resolution photos, 50-megapixel photos in 4-in-1 pixel binning mode, and 12.5-megapixel photos in 16-in pixel binning mode -1.
This technique of grouping pixels is known, but it differs here from the technology ” traditional» by grouping the data on the imager before signal amplification. While each pixel is amplified before aggregation in the traditional method, this mode enables aggregation of colored pixels before amplification, effectively reducing the amount of clutter processed afterwards. The grouping and organization of super pixels is also unconventional and would thus allow for better interpolation.
Samsung’s pixel-binning is called Tetra2pixel, it is supposed to give users the ultimate low-light experience. The technology allows the sensor to simulate a large pixel sensor to take brighter, more vibrant photos even in dark environments, such as indoors or at night.
The best conditions to get a photo full of details
Since the image was shared on the Chinese Weibo platform, its quality was reduced due to compression. So you can’t draw any definite conclusions from this image alone. Especially since Motorola has certainly used optimal conditions, especially regarding light. The shot is therefore full of details. The Motorola Edge X30 Pro further includes an ultra-wide camera with a 50-megapixel ISOCELL JN1 sensor and a 14.6-megapixel telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom.
The recovered file is 7.1 MB, and it has already been highly compressed. You can download compressed image here and zoom in on details.
This smartphone will probably be renamed Motorola Edge 30 Ultra or Motorola Edge 30 Pro in the rest of the world it has not yet been unveiled, but is known under the code nameFrontier. It has a 144 Hz OLED screen, the processor Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1a 4,500 mAh battery and 125 W fast charging. It will compete directly with the Galaxy S22 Ultrawhich has a 108-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and two 10-megapixel telephoto cameras.
As for Samsung, the Korean manufacturer is already working on a sensor named Isocell HP3. Note, however, that we currently do not know what else the Isocell HP3 will offer compared to its predecessor. Given the reduced age gap between the two sensors (the ISOCELL HP1 was unveiled less than a year ago), we imagine that Samsung is above all looking to slightly refine what had been done. U
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