It’s been a while since Samsung has announced its 200MP sensor and it’s highly likely that the South Korean company’s next high-end phone, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, will boast of this camera. This is apparently not the same as the HP1 and HP3 versions that the company has already announced and there has been speculation that the The 200MP sensor for the S23 Ultra would be really big, but apparently it’s not.
Smartphone vendors have a size limitation that prevents them from equipping their phones with very large sensors. Lately, we’ve seen companies use a technique called pixel clustering in which smaller individual pixels are combined to act as a single large pixel and produce more detailed images.
For example, even though the S22 Ultra rocks a 108MP camera, it takes 12MP images by default. Likewise, the new Apple iPhone 14 Pro, which comes with a 48MP main sensor, produces 12MP shots, which is achieved by combining the 1.22μm photosite data to deliver sensor-like images with 2.44μm pixels.
Such tricks can only get you so far though and at some point the physics will catch up and the camera sensors will have to get bigger to accommodate more megapixels. So while the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s monster 200MP sensor is unlikely to be the same size as the S22 Ultra’s 108MP unit, the good news is that the increase will be almost insignificant.
Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 200MP camera will pack more megapixels while remaining largely the same size
This scoop comes from an esteemed leaker ice universe who says he is 100% sure that the S23 Ultra’s 200MP main camera will be 1/1.3 inch in size and will have 0.6μm pixels and a larger aperture of f/1.7 to get more light. For reference, the S22 Ultra’s 108MP sensor measures 1/1.33-inches with 0.8µm pixels and an f/1.8 aperture.
He adds that it will be only slightly larger than the main 48MP camera of the iPhone 14 Pro which he says is also 1/1.3 inch. It’s possible it’ll be smaller than the sensors in some competing Android phones coming out next year. It may be referring to phones that can use 1-inch sensors.
As evidenced by his recent attempts to mocking Apple, Samsung is more focused on maintaining its lead over the iPhone maker. As Apple and Google have demonstrated, higher resolutions aren’t the end of the game, but they’re generally better for business users because they give them more options to work with.
The number of megapixels is still considered by many buyers as a reference number to decide the quality of a camera. Ultimately, many factors other than megapixels influence image quality, including sensor size, as a larger sensor can hold more pixels and capture more detail.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is rumored to retain the S22 Ultra’s 10MP telephoto sensors with 10x and 3x optical zoom. Nothing is known about the ultra-wide camera. The company is also expected to use smart software to help the S23 Ultra deliver significantly better images and videos. It is safe to assume that it will surpass the most best camera phones of 2022.