iPhone 6 Said to Feature Sony's 13-Megapixel Exmor IMX220 Camera Sensor

[Truefan31]

If they out a 13 mp camera in they really need to have the base iPhone have 32 gb.

 

[thefourthpope]

According to
...
which is loss of resolution.

Thank you for an informative post. I mean that. I didn't quote the whole thing only because it was too long, but I appreciate that you were topical, informative, and to the point. I learned something about pixels/sensor size. Thanks.

 

[tzeshan]

Most people are debating about whether we need more mega pixels. In present time what makes a picture looks good or bad is not the number of pixels. It is the quality of each pixel. In reality when a picture is taken, each pixel may not receive the correct color and brightness of light. The difference is called noise. If each pixel is 100% correct with no noise, a 2 MP picture will look better than the 8MP picture taken with the iPhone.

The noise could be due to the quality the image sensor chip. It also could be due to movement of the camera. To reduce noise due to movement, the camera could decrease the time it uses to expose a pixel. This can be done more easily when the light is bright. In low light condition, it is more difficult. The pixel has to be more sensitive to light.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

The back side of the pixel wars, whether applied to 13mb still photos or 4K video, are storage space, cellular data usage, and speed of data transfer. If Apple ups the storage (32k base model, 64k & 128k step-ups) without increasing the price to account for the doubled storage, then half the problem is licked. It doesn't address the question of whether it's necessary to upload every selfie in high resolution.

For that matter, the bigger the base images, the more iCloud storage will be needed.

You and I may actually want higher quality, but tell the 12-year-old whose iPhone storage is jammed with casual pictures of friends and pets. "I used to have over a thousand photos on my old phone. Why doesn't my new one fit a thousand?

Sure, Apple can apply heavier JPG processing to keep file size down, but that comes with its own costs. Will iPhone users need to learn about file-quality settings (and inevitably have the wrong setting at the wrong time)?

As to "I want 1080p on my Mac?" It's a front-facing camera, like the 720p front camera on iPhone 5s. Since FaceTime is one of its primary functions... we're back to the bandwidth question. It's not whether your broadband-connected iMac can cope with it, but whether the iPhone on the other end of the call can. Bringing a 1080p camera into the routine FaceTime stream is just begging for even heavier data reduction (data destruction).

If you said, "I want a back camera on my next Mac?" then it's a different story - why shouldn't a MBA be equipped similarly to an iPad? At that point, bring on the 4k!

 

[octothorpe8]

Which means it's hard to use my iPhone at concerts

Oh, are you one of those people who holds their damned phone up the whole time they're seeing live music? Because that sucks for people behind you, and you know that video is going to blow anyway. Just try, you know, being at the concert?

 

[randyj]

I don't want a 'carl zeiss' annotation on my iphone6

--EDIT
in before the "err, carl zeiss makes lenses, not sensors"

Little chance of that, they rebranded to just 'Zeiss'!!

 

[kerrikins]

This is exactly what i don't want to happen. I want the best iPhone 6. But I don't want 5.5". if the 5.5" is gonna be their feature packed, flagship model I am going to be really pissed. And I don't care about MP's

There have been absolutely no leaks of any 5.5 parts other than a sketchy looking display, so I wouldn't get too worried about that just yet.

 

[joe1946]

I bet Sony makes more money selling sensors to Apple than selling its own smartphones.

197 million iPhone cameras in 2015 !
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/5591...atch-release-date-2014-price.htm#.U8hQ06iLYnX

 

[Drag'nGT]

No matter what we know about photography and what is voted on the initial week or two after the phone launches and we see the 'iPhone's camera is better than xxxx' comparisons.

The people who are buying the phone want to read bigger numbers on nearly every aspect of the phone and make sure it's the "best one to buy" and more importantly, that it's better than what they have now. These are reasons to upgrade their current phone.

Nice, hopefully the sensor is big enough to work well in lower light situations. Pixels matter less then sensor size.

13 Megapixels are plenty. More important is low light performance and the auto focus system IMHO.

I would rather have a 6MP sensor with better dynamic range.

I hope everyone realises this and does not fall into the trap that 13MP is always better than 8MP. There's a lot more to it than that.

 

[afawcett]

less megapixels, better performance. i want quality over quantity.

 

[Camoxide]

Does iOS 8 have an option to decrease picture resolution?

I wont be needing to take 13MP snaps all the time gobbling up storage.

 

[FuzzMunky]

Only one person seems to have stated what should be obvious: The lenses of these smartphone cameras cannot resolve even close to this many MegaPixels. Thus, aside from the debate about light gathering of larger pixel pitches, there is NO benefit to including a higher MP sensor. The lens is the bottleneck. (Unless some trickery is being done to interpolate more pixels to create less noise. Though this would never be as good as simply larger pixels in the same place.)

 

[Hoothh]

Iphone 6s will have 5.5 128gb iphone 6 will only be 4.7 i may wait for s model.

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Does iOS 8 have an option to decrease picture resolution?

I wont be needing to take 13MP snaps all the time gobbling up storage.

Dont be a pus get the 128gb

 

[gto55]

Do any current smartphones use this sensor ?
If so, are there any samples of the photographes produced by these ?

 

[the whatever]

In no way am I defending the Lumia as a phone, because yes - it's absolute ****. However, the camera on said phone - does deserve a tip of the hat. Sure, generalizing iPhone as one device was wrong of me.

Wow, what an argumentative post... I can easily declare as fact that the iphone is utter **** aswell

 

[recoil80]

Why? This is way beyond the diffraction limit of that tiny lens. How often do any of you blow up a print beyond 16" anyway? How many of you even MAKE a print? A 1080p monitor is under 2 megapixels. A retina MacBook Pro is more like 5, and 4k is under 10. Not only will you see no benefit from more megapixels, you'll have to deal with several important compromises

1) More noise and less low-light sensitivity than a similarly designed sensor with fewer, larger pixels
2) Bigger file size/longer processing time. This is especially a big deal if the biggest phone is still only 64 GB and without some big iCloud size improvements
3) It's probably marginally more expensive.

For what? To have enough pixels where you can make a print big enough to see the limitations of the tiny lens? What's the point?

On the other hand, camera phones tend to suck in anything less than bright conditions...but people always want to use them at night. Focus on bigger pixels because the low-light performance is something people will actually notice. 8 Mp is plenty for a phone. Even 4 or 6 is sufficient if the low light performance is a lot better.

spot on!

 

[macduke]

Thank you for an informative post. I mean that. I didn't quote the whole thing only because it was too long, but I appreciate that you were topical, informative, and to the point. I learned something about pixels/sensor size. Thanks.

You're welcome! I enjoy teaching, especially when it comes to photography and design. I'm glad that someone appreciated my post, as I put some time into figuring out the numbers.

It's interesting how the pixel-pitch of the photo receptors in rumored larger sensor at 13mp match up with nearly the same pixel-pitch as the smaller sensor at 8mp. That is why I believe this rumor has some credibility. I suppose someone else could have figured that out themselves and just made it up, who knows. It could also be fairly tricky to fit a larger sensor into an even thinner phone—primarily due to the optics. There is a lot of math involved, but basically the distance from the lens to the focal plane is shortened, and the focal plane also needs to be expanded to account for the larger sensor surface area. Unfortunately I'm not an optics expert, but generally you need additional or redesigned image elements to account for something like that to prevent distortion in the corners of the photo. Accomplishing that in a phone as thin as the iPhone 6 would be quite difficult. One thing I do know for sure is making the phone thinner at all would require them to redo the entire camera system (or it would bulge out, which goes against Apple's design aesthetics), so perhaps they came up with a new solution. But hopefully they didn't sacrifice edge and corner sharpness in the process—which is a common challenge in lens design.

 

[bigpics]

less megapixels, better performance. i want quality over quantity.

Following that "logic" to its conclusion, your one megapixel phone is on order. Enjoy.

Why? This is way beyond the diffraction limit of that tiny lens. How often do any of you blow up a print beyond 16" anyway? How many of you even MAKE a print? A 1080p monitor is under 2 megapixels. A retina MacBook Pro is more like 5, and 4k is under 10. Not only will you see no benefit from more megapixels, you'll have to deal with several important compromises

1) More noise and less low-light sensitivity than a similarly designed sensor with fewer, larger pixels
2) Bigger file size/longer processing time. This is especially a big deal if the biggest phone is still only 64 GB and without some big iCloud size improvements
3) It's probably marginally more expensive.

For what? To have enough pixels where you can make a print big enough to see the limitations of the tiny lens? What's the point?

On the other hand, camera phones tend to suck in anything less than bright conditions...but people always want to use them at night. Focus on bigger pixels because the low-light performance is something people will actually notice. 8 Mp is plenty for a phone. Even 4 or 6 is sufficient if the low light performance is a lot better.

This has been put to the test, back when the iPhone 4s was Apple's king of the phone hlll, but HTC with its larger (for the time) sensor and with 4mp of "Ultra" pixels.

The tests showed the 4s outperformed in all conditions (and for cropping) except low light, and was still the better camera overall, and meanwhile the 5s is much better than the 4s with better optics and a newer sensor. So sorry, but the real world data [mostly] doesn't support you....

http://connect.dpreview.com/post/1916293861/we-put-the-htc-ones-ultrapixels-to-the-test

The HTC is doing a decent job in these [well lit] conditions albeit with a much warmer color response than the iPhone, but the latter is clearly better. In good light more pixels simply means more detail and this is clearly visible in the samples

....good light but more overcast conditions. Both phones struggle rendering the distant low-contrast areas but again the Apple's 8MP sensor captures more detail overall. On the flip-side the HTC produces a cleaner image with visible less shadow noise.

....with its comparatively low 4MP pixel count the HTC's image quality is deteriorating faster than the digital zoom of higher resolution smartphone cameras...

In low light the HTC One is clearly better than the iPhone, producing a much cleaner, more noise-free image and giving brighter, more colourful images.

It's difficult to isolate the effect the effect of the ultrapixels in this context as both the IS and the fast F2 lens playe a role too but in a way that’s academic, it's the end result that counts."

 

[jacobj]

I hope everyone realises this and does not fall into the trap that 13MP is always better than 8MP. There's a lot more to it than that.

Get a Nikon D810 and get great MP and DR ;-)

Sensor size is key so as to be able to increase the size of each light well so as to have more precision when measuring the differential between one and another. However ISO is also key and processing power delivers this, so let's hope the A8 can crunch some tough algorithms that increase the DR, whilst the larger sensor compensates the extra 5M light buckets. The 2 together could deliver a one two blow.

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In what world do you live in where Sony makes "by far the best cameras"?

The RX100 is a contender for the best compact camera in the market.

The A7R is a contender for the best mirror less camera on the market

The Nikon D810 is a contender for the best landscape SLR on the market and it uses a Sony sensor (actually the A7R sensor)

you don't have to agree with the above, but you can't outright provide a definitive reason that it's an invalid perspective either.

So it's only the medium format guys that offer better quality and I reckon the original poster was dismissing $30k cameras from the debate.

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I just love how you have stated as a FACT that very few people can tell the difference between 4k and 720p!
Tell me, when did you last test everyone on the planet? To back up your generalisation statement.

And I bet that when Apple make a 4K recording or viewing device you will soon backtrack your statement and suddenly see the difference...

Here here. I completely agree. What a BS statement. 4K on a 10" screen is pointless. By the time you get to 10' it makes all the difference in the world. In between it varies. This is a great example of hyperbolic statements disguised as educated wisdom.

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Why? This is way beyond the diffraction limit of that tiny lens. How often do any of you blow up a print beyond 16" anyway? How many of you even MAKE a print? A 1080p monitor is under 2 megapixels. A retina MacBook Pro is more like 5, and 4k is under 10. Not only will you see no benefit from more megapixels, you'll have to deal with several important compromises

1) More noise and less low-light sensitivity than a similarly designed sensor with fewer, larger pixels
2) Bigger file size/longer processing time. This is especially a big deal if the biggest phone is still only 64 GB and without some big iCloud size improvements
3) It's probably marginally more expensive.

For what? To have enough pixels where you can make a print big enough to see the limitations of the tiny lens? What's the point?

On the other hand, camera phones tend to suck in anything less than bright conditions...but people always want to use them at night. Focus on bigger pixels because the low-light performance is something people will actually notice. 8 Mp is plenty for a phone. Even 4 or 6 is sufficient if the low light performance is a lot better.

I'm not convinced that it's past the diffraction limit.

 

[carves]

Following that "logic" to its conclusion, your one megapixel phone is on order. Enjoy.



This has been put to the test, back when the iPhone 4s was Apple's king of the phone hlll, but HTC with its larger (for the time) sensor and with 4mp of "Ultra" pixels.

The tests showed the 4s outperformed in all conditions (and for cropping) except low light, and was still the better camera overall, and meanwhile the 5s is much better than the 4s with better optics and a newer sensor. So sorry, but the real world data [mostly] doesn't support you....

http://connect.dpreview.com/post/1916293861/we-put-the-htc-ones-ultrapixels-to-the-test

Nobody said pixel-size was the only important piece of the puzzle. Point is, you won't be able to tell the resolution improvement of anything above 5 MP on any monitor now available, and unless you pull out a loop you won't be able to see the difference on 10x12 prints...ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL. Just because two cameras use the same number of pixels on the same size chip doesn't mean they'll have the same image quality thought as there are many other factors that come into play- namely software and lens design and quality.

The new iPhone, through techniques like pixel doubling and advanced noise-reduction processing, but ESPECIALLY because of the larger sensor, may even take slightly less noisy low-light pictures than the old one, but that does not dismiss the point that the pictures would be even LESS noisy (and more sharp under low-light) with fewer, larger photosites.

Furthermore the limiting factor in image quality in modern phones is more likely to be dependent on diffraction limit and lens quality in something so tiny. Diffraction is less of an issue when shooting wide-open at f2, but using such a wide aperature is generally very demanding on lens quality, resulting in a very soft image with edge bluring. Shining that blurred image on a higher resolutino sensor yields exactly nothing.

I stand by my point because it's based on physics: 13 MP offers no real-world benefit over 8 on something with such a tiny lens, and noise level will be higher than a similar sensor design that uses fewer, larger photo sites. The physics is twofold

1) The smaller photo sites absorb fewer photons, so more signal amplification has to be applied. This makes for a worse signal to noise ratio, resulting in a noiser photo under low-light conditions. You can pixel-double and get a lower resolution image with less noise, but you still have less area covered by photosites and still need a bit more amplification, so it's not quite as good.

2) The lenses are TINY. This means unless they're polished to micron-fine tolerences...very unlikely in an add-on feature in a mass-market device...they probably don't have the clairty to make 13 MP useful.

 

[jacobj]

Nobody said pixel-size was the only important piece of the puzzle. Point is, you won't be able to tell the resolution improvement of anything above 5 MP on any monitor now available, and unless you pull out a loop you won't be able to see the difference on 10x12 prints...ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL. Just because two cameras use the same number of pixels on the same size chip doesn't mean they'll have the same image quality thought as there are many other factors that come into play- namely software and lens design and quality.

The new iPhone, through techniques like pixel doubling and advanced noise-reduction processing, but ESPECIALLY because of the larger sensor, may even take slightly less noisy low-light pictures than the old one, but that does not dismiss the point that the pictures would be even LESS noisy (and more sharp under low-light) with fewer, larger photosites.

Furthermore the limiting factor in image quality in modern phones is more likely to be dependent on diffraction limit and lens quality in something so tiny. Diffraction is less of an issue when shooting wide-open at f2, but using such a wide aperature is generally very demanding on lens quality, resulting in a very soft image with edge bluring. Shining that blurred image on a higher resolutino sensor yields exactly nothing.

I stand by my point because it's based on physics: 13 MP offers no real-world benefit over 8 on something with such a tiny lens, and noise level will be higher than a similar sensor design that uses fewer, larger photo sites. The physics is twofold

1) The smaller photo sites absorb fewer photons, so more signal amplification has to be applied. This makes for a worse signal to noise ratio, resulting in a noiser photo under low-light conditions. You can pixel-double and get a lower resolution image with less noise, but you still have less area covered by photosites and still need a bit more amplification, so it's not quite as good.

2) The lenses are TINY. This means unless they're polished to micron-fine tolerences...very unlikely in an add-on feature in a mass-market device...they probably don't have the clairty to make 13 MP useful.

Share the maths. I don't buy it. High quality sapphire at f/2 (good DoF on such a small sensor) will be within the limits of the len's diffraction tolerances. At least at more than 8MP. I would be fun to get hold of the RAW files for a comparison.

 

[FuzzMunky]

Share the maths. I don't buy it. High quality sapphire at f/2 (good DoF on such a small sensor) will be within the limits of the len's diffraction tolerances. At least at more than 8MP. I would be fun to get hold of the RAW files for a comparison.

Ha. Errr. The iphone 5s aperture is not a FF equivalent of f2. It is, in terms of Depth of Field more like an f11.

 

[bigpics]

Nobody said pixel-size was the only important piece of the puzzle. Point is, you won't be able to tell the resolution improvement of anything above 5 MP on any monitor now available, and unless you pull out a loop you won't be able to see the difference on 10x12 prints...ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL. Just because two cameras use the same number of pixels on the same size chip doesn't mean they'll have the same image quality thought as there are many other factors that come into play- namely software and lens design and quality.

The new iPhone, through techniques like pixel doubling and advanced noise-reduction processing, but ESPECIALLY because of the larger sensor, may even take slightly less noisy low-light pictures than the old one, but that does not dismiss the point that the pictures would be even LESS noisy (and more sharp under low-light) with fewer, larger photosites.

Furthermore the limiting factor in image quality in modern phones is more likely to be dependent on diffraction limit and lens quality in something so tiny. Diffraction is less of an issue when shooting wide-open at f2, but using such a wide aperature is generally very demanding on lens quality, resulting in a very soft image with edge bluring. Shining that blurred image on a higher resolutino sensor yields exactly nothing.

I stand by my point because it's based on physics: 13 MP offers no real-world benefit over 8 on something with such a tiny lens, and noise level will be higher than a similar sensor design that uses fewer, larger photo sites. The physics is twofold

1) The smaller photo sites absorb fewer photons, so more signal amplification has to be applied. This makes for a worse signal to noise ratio, resulting in a noiser photo under low-light conditions. You can pixel-double and get a lower resolution image with less noise, but you still have less area covered by photosites and still need a bit more amplification, so it's not quite as good.

2) The lenses are TINY. This means unless they're polished to micron-fine tolerences...very unlikely in an add-on feature in a mass-market device...they probably don't have the clairty to make 13 MP useful.

You made some of the same points I made in my first post - e.g., that algorithms have a ton to with what happens between light hitting the sensor and what we see. Lens speed matters as well, as of course does lens quality.

Meanwhile throwing pics through a ton of filters in a $3 app probably causes multi-tons of damage to the original pixels... ...so whatever about how we use and see our pics today...

And new software tricks are allowing good simulations of things like bokeh and other photo characteristics associated with more complex lenses of greater physical depth and light-gathering capability. Not the "real thing" - but more and more digital photography's adding to what photography can do in ways never possible before.

One more point I made earlier that I'll stand by is that part of what we're doing is archiving our lives - and that digital tech will continue to advance inexorably. Ergo....

VHS video looked half decent on old standard NTSC, but my family stuff from that era looks like CRAP now (especially for reasons I dunno after the conversions to digital that were done for me)... ....it's sad, really to not even be able to make faces out, e.g....

....so if I'm making files (e.g., 4K video) that seem excessive now, their file sizes will be trivial in 15 years and techniques may exist to extract all the quality possible when viewing them on my 16k screen (or however we'll be viewing at that point). And analogically the same goes for still photos.

Info not captured will never be there. Info captured less than optimally may be subject to enhancement and types of recovery.

All that being said (and much else in the thread), I doubt Apple would add MP (in a larger sensor, where pixel density won't be decreased) for the sake of adding MP, so if they do, I'm expecting a general increase in quality across the still and video board.

Share the maths. I don't buy it. High quality sapphire at f/2 (good DoF on such a small sensor) will be within the limits of the len's diffraction tolerances. At least at more than 8MP. I would be fun to get hold of the RAW files for a comparison.

Interesting. Would like to know more about what you're saying here...

 

[PocketSand11]

These camera upgrades are always the main reason I'd want the next iPhone. 13MP! I mean, this is good assuming that the lens technology is good enough to handle it well.

 

[jacobj]

Ha. Errr. The iphone 5s aperture is not a FF equivalent of f2. It is, in terms of Depth of Field more like an f11.

Err. I didn't say it was. I'm a landscape guy, so good DoF for me is a deeper plane of focus. The point is that it's not a tiny aperture. Even accepting an f/11 equivalent, that would be capable of going over 8MP without noticeable diffraction.

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Interesting. Would like to know more about what you're saying here...

YES. Please share the maths. I want you to take us all through the maths that will detail that narrowest point in the iPhone lens, the relative diffraction that this will cause across the entire frame (perhaps a chart here to show centre and edge sharpness) taking into account the focal length of the lens (5mm at its greatest) and the size of the sensor. If you have the time, perhaps you can detail how this will vary by wavelength. I want a comparison of the above against pixel size and how that will look when comparing it to the current iPhone 5s.

I don't want: hey I know how to control DoF by using apertures and I know that diffraction causes an issue on a narrower aperture. You may be a keen amateur photographer (it's my part time obsession too), but knowing about aperture, shutter speed, ISO, diffraction, plane of focus, DoF, DR, vignetting, lens distortion, chromatic aberration, etc, doesn't make you a technical expert. You're just an informed user.

If optics is your technical area though, then please inform me because I'll consume any info on photography that you have to offer. But you have to tell me more than Ansel Adams does in his book "The Camera".