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The theory is correct.

But HTC didn't have much success with it 4 years ago.

Ironically... HTC has the highest-rated camera on DxOMark at the moment (if you follow that sort of thing :))
Yeah I guess they did take it to the extreme dropping right down to 4MP, in fairness my previous Lumia 930 captured 8MP photos using a 19MP sensor and a similar 4-into-1 idea as this and Apple's retina display - and that produced excellent photos (though did have the benefit of a considerably larger 1/2.5" sensor) Not hugely into cameras, usually just take general snaps with my phone, but that means I do like it to be the best camera it can be so I try to keep up with the general principles of what makes a good photo in what conditions! I liked playing with all the manual settings on the Lumia, but think ultimately most of the best photos were from leaving it on auto settings!
 
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Meaningless megapixel bump for next year. Means they have no better tech or innovation plans post-iPhone X.

There is no way to definitively know what Apple has in store for 2018. That said, it's not also expected for major camera alterations each year, it's a building process to improve different aspects of the camera. But given how refined the iPhone 7 camera currently is, low light photography is an area I would like to see for improvement.
 
There are many phones that can match iPhone 7 camera capability.Apple must do something about camera this year.

Match? You mean crush the iPhone 7 camera. The iPhone 7 and 7+ cameras are just average. Far from anything special or amazing.
 
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Yeah I guess they did take it to the extreme dropping right down to 4MP, in fairness my previous Lumia 930 captured 8MP photos using a 19MP sensor and a similar 4-into-1 idea as this and Apple's retina display - and that produced excellent photos (though did have the benefit of a considerably larger 1/2.5" sensor) Not hugely into cameras, usually just take general snaps with my phone, but that means I do like it to be the best camera it can be so I try to keep up with the general principles of what makes a good photo in what conditions! I liked playing with all the manual settings on the Lumia, but think ultimately most of the best photos were from leaving it on auto settings!

This is why I like the Lumia 950XL. 21MP with a 1/2.4" sensor and a f/1.9 aperture combined with a Carl Zeiss lens. Takes really good low light pictures and the phone is two years old.
 
Yeah, you want larger pixels for better low-light photography. A larger camera sensor would help with this. Twelve Megapixels is plenty at this point. If they are increasing the pixel count, I really hope they are also getting a larger camera sensor. They just increased the sensor last year in the iPhone 7 for the first time since the 5s, but I'd still like a larger one in the upcoming iPhone. Maybe something like a 1/1.7″. If they keep the same 12MP camera, then it would have the largest pixels of any iPhone ever at like 1.9 µm (compared to the current best of 1.5µm in the iPhone 5s and 6). For comparison, the iPhone 6s has 1.2µm, and I've read that the iPhone 7 has 1.3µm, but I think that the iPhone 7 might actually be the same 1.2µm pixels as the iPhone 6s. Apple has been less vocal about the camera sensor after the pixel size shrinkage.
The sensor size increase in the iPhone happened between the iPhone 5 and 5s, from 1/3.2" to 1/3". The iPhone 7 still has a 1/3" sensor, what improved with the iPhone 7 was the f-stop of the lens. The faster lens speed helps in low light (by keeping the ISO lower), a larger sensor helps with base ISO (aka good light) performance and low light performance in the form of less noise, less noise reduction artefacts and more dynamic range:
  • 5: 1/3.2", 8 MP, 1.4 μm, f/2.4
  • 5s, 6: 1/3", 8 MP, 1.5 μm, f/2.2
  • 6s: 1/3", 12 MP, 1.22 μm, f/2.2
  • 7: 1/3", 12 MP, 1.22 μm, f/1.8
As sensor technology and manufacturing processes (and probably also image processing) improve, what is the optimum pixel size decreases. How you define optimum depends on a lot of factors, but for a given definition, the above is true.

BTW, the pixel size of almost all smartphones varies between 1.1 μm and 1.5 μm. While that is slowly trending downwards, you won't see big jumps in this area. Therefore, while we might see 1 μm or even 0.9 μm in the next couple of years, if you want to hit a certain MP number, you can easily calculate the required sensor size based on a pixel size of between 1 and 1.2 μm.
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Thought the same thing. 600 million per month equals 7.2 BILLION annually.
That is about one camera module per person per year for every human on Earth.
 
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Quite to the contrary: The larger the individual pixel, the more light it can capture. The best example is the Sony A7S camera, which has only 12 Megapixel and a highest ISO of 409 600 !!
ISO rating is nearly meaningless. It's what kind of image that is produced at that ISO is what is important. For the A7S, the max ISO that produces a respectable image is 1600. 3200 brings too much noise and is unusable for anything but candid photos of your family which is not what one would get the A7S for.
 
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Yep... there's something weird about that number.

For some context... there were 340 million smartphones shipped last quarter... which would be 113 million smartphones per month.

So this company "Largan" producing 600 million lens modules per month is already too high even if they were supplying EVERY smartphone in the world. (which I doubt they are)

Once again... Digitimes raises more questions than it answers. :p
But most flagships have moved over to dual camera set ups, so that's 2x modules per phone, 3 if you count the FFCs which are now getting quite advanced on some models? Still quite a lot, but maybe not quite so off as would seem at first? Then again, flagships are a relatively small segment of the overall smartphone sales figures, so who knows.
 
So they are still finding ways to have smaller photosites that capture the same amount of light or something?
 
This is why I like the Lumia 950XL. 21MP with a 1/2.4" sensor and a f/1.9 aperture combined with a Carl Zeiss lens. Takes really good low light pictures and the phone is two years old.
This is a picture I took 2 months ago using my 14 year old 6.3MP Canon 300D (1st Digi-Rebel). IMG_2429.JPG
 
But most flagships have moved over to dual camera set ups, so that's 2x modules per phone, 3 if you count the FFCs which are now getting quite advanced on some models? Still quite a lot, but maybe not quite so off as would seem at first? Then again, flagships are a relatively small segment of the overall smartphone sales figures, so who knows.

Yeah... it's possible that they are producing front-facing lens modules too... almost all phones have those nowadays.

But you're right... dual-camera flagships still aren't (yet) up to the level of requiring 600 million modules a month.

EDIT... I just read the article again. It says the new factory is reportedly designed to accommodate monthly production of 600 million lens modules.

It doesn't say they currently produce that many.

It's funny... the article also says Largan is the only supplier that can meet Apple's minimum yield rate.

They must be pretty good then.

So how come we've never heard of Largan? I read all the trash by Digitimes and I've never seen them mentioned. Largan has been around since 1987
 
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I took this one at night on my Lumia 950XL. It's been exported to JPG but it's the contrast that's interesting in this one.
 

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Yeah... it's possible that they are producing front-facing lens modules too... almost all phones have those nowadays.

But you're right... dual-camera flagships still aren't (yet) up to the level of requiring 600 million modules a month.

EDIT... I just read the article again. It says the new factory is reportedly designed to accommodate monthly production of 600 million lens modules.

It doesn't say they currently produce that many.

It's funny... the article also says Largan is the only supplier that can meet Apple's minimum yield rate.

They must be pretty good then.

So how come we've never heard of Largan? I read all the trash by Digitimes and I've never seen them mentioned. Largan has been around since 1987
Yeah I believe it's been Sony up until now? Though they were struggling to keep up and I think at one point started turning away other business to accommodate Apple? Maybe they decided they couldn't keep alienating other manufacturers for Apple incase they were ultimately dropped anyway?
 
The sensor size really has to go up if this is true. More megapixels on the same 1/3rd sensor aren't going to help; a larger sensor is. That's why other phones have taken iPhones historical lead there, can't beat the physics of a simply larger sensor.
 
This is inaccurate.

Keep in mind that megapixels don't always matter, as even a TV or monitor with 4K Ultra HD resolution of 3,840×2,160 pixels only has roughly 8.3 megapixels, which isn't enough to display a 12-megapixel photo at full resolution.
On a camera sensor elements are often called "pixels", even though they only record 1 channel (only red, or green, or blue) of the final color image. They then use a demosaicing to translate this. They're essentially 1/3 the stated actual resolution with algorithms to fake it.

I think it's one of the biggest scams ever committed on the general public, but yeah keep spreading the misconception...
 
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More pixels -> smaller pixel -> less light -> lower voltage -> more noise -> worse images.

So all these professional and mobile cameras with more than one megapixel are a waste then, huh?

Be my guest to return to lower megapixels. I certainly won't. smh.
 
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600 million monthly lol. What kinda ******** number. 6 million perhaps, and with that rate one can only imagine what the error rate could be.
 
"More pixels = more noise"

...One week later...

"Ooh the new iPhone camera with more pixels takes amazing photos, I can't wait to get my hands on mine!"
I do know from experience with DSLR's that a 12MP Full frame sensor takes better pictures than a 12MP Cropped sensor.
The cross pixel noise/interference is greatly reduced with the full frame sensor.
With DSLR's approaching 50MP (Nikon D850 with 47MP) a decent 12-15MP Camera sensor with excellent image quality and low light capabilities should be possible.
 
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