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Tim Cook Pays Tribute to Apple's Enduring Partnership With Sony to Develop 'World's Leading Camera Sensors' for iPhones

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Tim Cook today publicly paid tribute to Sony's long-term partnership with Apple in creating cutting-edge camera sensors for successive iPhone models for over a decade.

tim-cook-sony-japan-visit.jpeg

In a tweet posted during his visit to Sony's camera development facility in Kumamoto, Japan, Cook acknowledged the company's successful partnership with Apple to create "the world's leading camera sensors for iPhone," and thanked the team at the facility for showing him around.

Apple doesn't usually reveal the specific makers of the hardware components that it uses in iPhones, but its use of Sony camera hardware has long been known by close followers of the company's supply chain.

Apple reportedly used Sony's camera sensor for the iPhone 6, and subsequent hardware teardowns by the likes of iFixit have identified Sony-made components in successive iPhone models.

Cook's tweet suggests Apple's partnership with Sony remains strong, and rumors to that effect already signal the Japanese company's contributions to future Apple products. For example, According to a November report from Nikkei, next year's iPhone 15 models will be equipped with Sony's newest "state of the art" image sensors.

Compared to standard sensors, Sony's image sensor doubles the saturation signal in each pixel, allowing it to capture more light to cut down on underexposure and overexposure. Nikkei said that it is able to better photograph a person's face even with strong backlighting.


Apple is working on a periscope telephoto lens that will improve the ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro's optical zoom capabilities, allowing for up to 10x optical zoom to match some Android smartphones that are on the market. The Sony image sensor technology would likely be used for the Wide camera that Apple considers the iPhone's "main" camera as Apple typically uses different technology for each lens.

Also for next year, Sony is expected to supply Apple with an OLED on silicon (OLEDoS) – also known as micro-OLED – display for the company's first-generation mixed-reality headset.

Article Link: Tim Cook Pays Tribute to Apple's Enduring Partnership With Sony to Develop 'World's Leading Camera Sensors' for iPhones
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/13/tim-cook-apple-sony-camera-partnership/
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Interesting that Tim would visit Japan this close to the holidays. Given the rumor of Sony being involved with the development of the display in the AR/VR project, this makes me wonder if that has something to do with it. Regardless, it is neat to see two innovative companies working together instead of being enemies.
 
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As Sony becomes more of a premium supplier, this makes sense. If Sony becomes a supplier to iPhone only for sensors, it makes a brand difference in a part that Apple is simply even with Samsung now.

It's likely only Sony could pull off a proper optical stack for AR today.
 
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As a user of Sony phones before I defected to iOS I can’t help but wonder why it’s therefore taken this long to change from a 12 megapixel sensor, when Sony had some excellent 23 megapixel sensors in their Z5 range back in 2015
 
VampyricGentleman said:
As a user of Sony phones before I defected to iOS I can’t help but wonder why it’s therefore taken this long to change from a 12 megapixel sensor, when Sony had some excellent 23 megapixel sensors in their Z5 range back in 2015
Click to expand...
if you go back and look at your 2015 photos next to modern day phone images, your excellent photos won't look so excellent all of a sudden.
 
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drumcat said:
As Sony becomes more of a premium supplier, this makes sense. If Sony becomes a supplier to iPhone only for sensors, it makes a brand difference in a part that Apple is simply even with Samsung now.

It's likely only Sony could pull off a proper optical stack for AR today.
Click to expand...
Sony have been the main supplier of camera sensors for many phone brands for over a decade,not just for Apple but also for Samsung phones and others.
It’s their expertise.
They even make camera sensors for Nikon DSLR cameras.
the same way LG and Samsung produce display panels for Apple products and OLED panels for Sony,Philips and Panasonic TVs.
 
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ColdShadow said:
Sony have been the main supplier of camera sensors for many phone brands for over a decade,not just for Apple but also for Samsung phones and others.
It’s their expertise.
They even make camera sensors for Nikon DSLR cameras.
the same way LG and Samsung produce display panels for Apple products and OLED panels for Sony,Philips and Panasonic TVs.
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Yeah Sony were the leader in low light, which I think is the key in tiny sensors. They also supply something like 75% of Dash Cam Cameras.

sunny5 said:
Curved sensor?
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That'd really mess up lenses I reckon. It’d have to be a whole new type of system for that to happen.
 
Kierkegaarden said:
Interesting that Tim would visit Japan this close to the holidays. Given the rumor of Sony being involved with the development of the display in the AR/VR project, this makes me wonder if that has something to do with it. Regardless, it is neat to see two innovative companies working together instead of being enemies.
Click to expand...

And it isn't just Sony either. Tim Cook seems to be going to a lot of places lately. His first visit to Japan wasn't even that long ago.
 
I wonder if the rumored periscope lens will move, or be "zoomable",not digital zooming. I also wonder if it will be possible to film at over 240 fps on the new sensor.
 
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VampyricGentleman said:
I can’t help but wonder why it’s taken this long to change from a 12 megapixel sensor, when Sony had some excellent 23 megapixel sensors in their Z5 range back in 2015
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Because photo quality can't be measured in megapixels alone. It's equally important how accurately each sensor measures the light for each pixel. And accuracy rises with more light on fewer bigger pixels.
 
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VampyricGentleman said:
As a user of Sony phones before I defected to iOS I can’t help but wonder why it’s therefore taken this long to change from a 12 megapixel sensor, when Sony had some excellent 23 megapixel sensors in their Z5 range back in 2015
Click to expand...
I assume part of the issue could have been iPhone scale, and also that number of megapixels isn't the key determining factor for the quality of photos. Seemed like Apple was focused (snort) on bigger megapixels for quite some time.
 
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Kierkegaarden said:
Interesting that Tim would visit Japan this close to the holidays. Given the rumor of Sony being involved with the development of the display in the AR/VR project, this makes me wonder if that has something to do with it. Regardless, it is neat to see two innovative companies working together instead of being enemies.
Click to expand...

Were they ever enemies? I know Sony makes a phone. I don’t think even Sony thinks it’s seriously competition. Sony just seems to make a lot of technology that Apple likes to use.
 
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I wonder what all the other equipment in that room is designed to do. That lamp that looks like a boom mic for example. Would love to play around with their devices that are currently under development.
 
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