Galaxy S11's camera may break three flagship specs records… may it disappoint, too?
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
TL;DR
It’s now more or less clear what the tech blogosphere’s favorite leaking cat Ice Universe meant when they said that the camera set on the Galaxy S11 series will have “never before seen” features. First, we heard that at least the Galaxy S11+ will use a 108MP main camera sensor, a record for high-end phones.
Could Galaxy S11 come with the best phone camera there is?
Now the same leaky cat is reiterating the 48MP telephoto camera notion, and we don’t know what kind of periscope, pixel-binning or straight-out cropping trickery will Samsung employ to get to the rumored maximum zoom level, but the amount of detail it will have to play with will be staggering just deducing from the rumored camera sensor specs alone.
Samsung will lead the high-pixel telephoto lens, and the telephoto cameras of the S11e, S11, and S11 + are not less than 48MP.
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) 19 декември 2019 г.
He still expects Samsung to use a tailored version of the current 108MP sensor for its spring flagship, dubbed ISOCELL Bright HM1, which will use 3×3 pixel-binning called Nonacell, instead of the 2×2 grid that Samsung’s current Tetracell technology uses for its 64MP ISOCELL Bright GW1 and 108MP ISOCELL Bright HMX sensors.
S11+ unique new generation 108MP sensor seems to be called ISOCELL Bright HM1. It is a more advanced Nonacell technology than Tetracell. It merges a cluster of 9 pixels into a single pixel and allows 0.8μm pixels to be converted to 2.4μm pixels, greatly improving Low-light shoot
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) 18 декември 2019 г.
Thus, this alleged custom-made-for-S11 version of Samsung’s 108MP sensor will will up the ante in the pixel-binning aspect, from a 2×2, to a 3×3 grid. Thus, while phone makers that use Sony’s ubiquitous 48MP sensor in binning mode for 12MP photos, and those who take Samsung’s 64MP one down to 16MP by virtually merging four adjacent pixels, use 4x binning, Samsung will reportedly go for 9x.
Where’s the third record, you may ask? Well, not in the eventual Nonacell pixel-binning, or whatever Samsung calls it if it materializes, as it is just an expansion of a current technology.
The third Galaxy S11 series camera record, however, lies in the final virtual pixel size of 3 x 0.8 = 2.4 microns. This will allow it to again churn out 12MP photos from the giant 108MP sensor, but with way more detail, and richer color and dynamic range information, as the virtual pixel size will be the record 2.4 micron.
Compare that to the 1.4 micron physical pixel size in the S10 series, or the current 2 x 0.8 = 1.6 micron from pixel-binned 48MP/64MP/108MP phone cameras, and we are certainly expecting photography improvements all around if all those rumors swirling around the S11 series camera set finally hold water.
Could the first Galaxy S11 picture and video samples ruin the hype?
It has happened many a times before with Apple, Samsung, Google or Huawei touting “unseen” camera technologies during the keynotes, only to deliver evolutionary improvements in real-life pictures and video quality that don’t really go against the laws of small optics and sensor physics.
This time around, it might be different, and the crazy rumor buildup could climax in jaw-dropping footage indeed, so we needn’t set our expectations bar low just because we don’t want to end up disappointed by the hype for the umpteenth time. What do you think?