Rumor: Samsung Galaxy S11+ sensor to use Nonacell technology

Aren't many lenses a form of plastic? A lot of lens 'glass' is actually resin with better light transmission properties than glass and lighter! Cheep plastic lenses are for toy cameras!

I think that intelligently combining the read out of multiple pixels helps to identify and reduce random noise (like shot noise).

More HDR tricks to make photos artificial and instagram ready.

chetan crasta
You "think". So you don't know the answer.

I've not seen any worthwhile improvements in ILCs lately, mostly just gimmicky features. IQ has not changed at all over the years. An "old" D750 will produce images just as good as the latest mirrorless craptastic camera.

There are actually very few point and shoot cameras left. Most fixed lens camera have full aperture, shutter speed and ISO adjustment with comprehensive controls and with most 1" you have to keep an eye on depth of field.
Plus limited reach on smartphones so I would be interested to know what exactly you mean by point and shoot. Plus entry level cameras have not a lot less flexibility than more expensive models. In fact may need more skill to get good results which is part of the fun of photography. Not instant automated image output.

These vague gloating point and shoot cameras are dead posts are so easy to type but convey very little really useful information or any hint that there is actually any real knowledge of the subject in hand. Just casual cut and paste internet garbage.

The conspiracy theory addicts are out in full force today.

@MaxISO
The number of pixels doesn't really matter in that equation. What matters is the actual surface covered by pixels (the photosensitive part) vs electronics.
In older designs they were competing, meaning the more pixels you have also more electronics and wires you had on the surface of the sensor, so normally the noise increased (or rather said, the total amount of photons ending up on electronics rather than recorded was larger).
With current design (BSI, stacked, micro-lenses, "special materials" replacing the metal grid, etc), we almost reached a place where using smaller pixels vs more pixels doesn't really matter as the "total recorded photons" are almost identical in both scenarios (large pixels, or small lots of pixels). You would get more noise at per pixel level, sure, but if you would down-sample the images would be almost identical at any given ISO.

@Badi, So if an ILC had a BSI sensor, it gets the same benefit as the phone sensor in the article?

@CarpentersEye, every camera i own allows output of a lower resolution. So if i set my M50 at 12mp instead of it's native 24mp, then it's "clean" ? So what's the magic difference between that and me just taking a 24mp shot and down sampling it in PS?

Read this article:

https://m.dpreview.com/articles/3560214217/resolution-aliasing-and-light-loss-why-we-love-bryce-bayers-baby-anyway

I think you'll better understand the benefits of sampling more R, G, and B data for each final pixel.

If not, read it again more carefully.

Then consider why high res cameras we have seen recently have shown us better tonal range / color response than previous lower res sensors.

In other words, CanikonSonyPanaOly could probably benefit from doing this, too. And some do, with their high res modes.

But it does take a lot more processing power, memory, and of course new sensors.

Phones happen to have incredibly powerful CPUs, memory, and they can shoot photos without having to be troubled by CIPA battery life ratings and burst speed tagets (6+ fps) that would probably go bust if the same approach were taken in dedicated cameras...

Sampling more points is well understood by most, has been for a long time and i don't know of anybody who disagrees. What i (and i assume most others) are challenging is the implication it's somehow catching up to large sensors through the magic of averaging.

The single most powerful factor in SNR, overwhelmingly so, is how many photons you capture. I hope it improves phones bc i buy them too, but every new thing that is announced is said to be the big breakthrough, then every time we see the same performance gap.

Im just here to insert a little sanity, even if it is against the current.

LOL. You could be a stand up comedic

Except the fact most phones at iso400 already have very poor texture.

Articles about smartphones always brings out the Trolls. To answer your question since everybody eats at McDonalds and hardly anyone at 5 star restaurants McDonalds is all that matters.

Phones has powerful CPU to do the noise reduction comparing to real cameras which has no power at all, so the OOC photos have less noise from phones for the *same size* of sensor.

But even for the same sensor size, real cameras can reduce as much noise as Phones can. How so? it uses PP from Adobe, DxO, and others' APPs on your PC which can be more powerful than any phones at least.

'noise performance that matches full frame cameras'
If you merge 30+ images then yeah that might be achievable. Impossible in handheld though.

Mike FL,
"comparing to real cameras which has no power at all"
This is a somewhat exagerated. They also host dedicated image processors.
They are called Digic, Venus engine, BionZ, TruePic, etc...

@Karroly.

Comparing to phone's heave weight dedicated image processors from Qualcomm, " Digic, Venus engine, BionZ, TruePic, etc" are just kids' game.

Below is just examples from 4 years old Snapdragon cam features from Qualcomm:
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2015/01/12/snapdragonsnapdragon-features-add-dslr-effects-your-mobile-phone

Now, Snapdragon adds more features such as, but not limited to:

- AI for noise reduction.

- can same time process up to 3 images from 3 cam/lens to form one final image, and here is an example for two cam/lens:

The phone shoots one photo by using Tele and Main cam same time, and Snapdragon uses Tele image as a map for Main cam's image to fill the Tele image b/c Main cam has the best IQ.

In the phones' sensor HDR, other than take multiple shoots, Sony's phone sensor has "Single Shot HDR" years ago...

Mike FL,
I know that smartphones have more powerful CPUs, but again, saying camera CPUs have "no power at all" is exagerated. Period.
And my entry level EOS200D features both several multishot HDR modes and one multishot noise reduction setting that can be used handheld with an OIS lens and in Live View mode for the shortest lag between shots. You are surprised ?

@Karroly;

I fully understand real camera VS phones.

I use Nikon full frame, but I use two Olympus body for travel light. By sing two body I do not have t change lens...

Some time I bring 1" sensor P&S such as SONY RX100.M3 and Pana ZS100, plus Oly TG2 for backup in case of rain, and use phones UWA as needed.

Powerful CPU & GPU is not the only thing about phone, but great R&D photography power from Qualcomm in chip level and Google & Apple in software level.

Now, back to Noise reduction, only SONY's cameras have so called " Selective Digital Noise Reduction" which is better than other camera makers, but still way behind Phones "AI powered Noise Reduction".

But none of the phone can beat 1" sensor camera, but "Daydreamer".

@Karrory, CPUs used by dedicated cameras are absolutely nothing compared to those that modern highend phones have. According to Wikipedia, BIONZ X processor found inside a7 III still uses Cortex-A5 cores - A nearly 10 years old ARM core which was used in the first generation Snapdragon S1 SoC by Qualcomm.

Next year most flagship phones will feature Snapdragon 865 with an ability to process 2GP within a second, shoot 4K HDR video while simultaneously capturing up to 64MP snapshots, apply varying amount of NR to different parts of the image, and so on.. On top of that, smartphone manufacturers are better at processing images with software thanks to huge amount of R&D budget they have compared to camera manufacturers. For instance, can your EOS200R do HDR shots without showing any sign of ghosting on moving objects? Most likely not.

Cameras, for long, use a kind of "selective noise reduction". The darker an area of the image is, the stronger the noise reduction.

Also in areas with no detail such as blue skies, often more noise reduction is applied.

@LensBeginner - well, not! Ever heard of Nikola Tesla, he's the man!

Actually the invention of the telephone can be attributed to:
Charles Grafton Page, an American
Innocenzo Manzetti, an Italian
Charles Bourseul, a Frenchman
Johann Phillipp Reis, a German
Antonio Meucci, an Italian
Elisha Grey, an Amerian
and Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish born naturalised American who was given the first patent.

The pioneers or radio transmission had nothing to do with 19th century telephones.

@Jay A
You have to first transmit something on air before thinking about analog modulation and then about digital modulation, and even before that you have to think about it.

Well you first have to be able to use electricity in order to transmit something on air. So I guess Benjamin Franklin invented the telephone eh? :)

Cheap but fast android phone (crappy cameras doesn't matter) + Sony RX's/Canon G1X's = Win. Install the app that allows photo transfers and you're good to go for your social media posts. This has been my current setup but I use milc.

Or is it none-a-cell ?

Just waiting for the sedecacell sensor of 2024 😊

if they can give you the benefits of extra resolution with small loss in low noise performance I'd say not bad, it does make processing RAW images for those who like that route, a PITA

They could have done that, but then they'd lost the ability to do multiple exposure settings for each pixel in a cell to give 1 exposure HDR, not the multiple exposure HDR we've all gotten used to.

The nanocell has the same layout as quad-bayer, tetracell.
Converting to 12MP is probably just a more advanced, direct, fast demoisaicing that is more complex than a simple box filter over four pixels.

I assume the point of having more pixels without having a matching bayer array is that you can do fast box filters with simple math while also being able to change the sensitivity of neighboring pixels to capture more dynamic range.
They could also be solving problems that tiny 108mp bayer color filters may cause. Maybe making the color filter array too fine leads to other issues, issues not present on larger sensor cameras with high megapixel counts.

There must be reasons, otherwise manufacturers would have just done the simplest thing...

I guess it has advantages with respect to aliasing, given that the color information comes from many more points in the sensor.

Because customers are stupid and they will pay extra for a phone with big numbers like 100. This is literally the reason why. Having a 100MP sensor just provides worse performance at higher cost than a 12mp sensor in a phone.

Zephyrprime, that's not true.

I use a 64MP phone to shoot, and the resolution is about 20MP FF.

The way pixels are arranged will only allow you to shoot in 12MP mode. This also means that there won't be 27MP because it's not Quad Bayer, and 108MP will be a dumpster fire that you wouldn't be even bothered to zoom into.

According to Samsung, the new sensor design with that new barrier material between pixels offers advantages compared to conventional BSI sensors with metal barrier also for big sensor.

I actually are not interested in crazy pixel counts. IMHO manufactures should stop increasing pixel count. I personally do not need more than 20 MP.

Ah wait. I am not interested in this pixel binning technology but only the other advancements of the new sensor tech. Forgot to write that in the first place.

Binning 4 or 9 pixels instead of having only one pixel of the same overall size does not bring any advantages in term of S/N. Instead, "breaking" a big pixel into 4 or 9 smaller pixels DOES add gaps, even if they are very small, which means less photons captured.
Also, looking for new technologies to reduce the gap between pixels is something that all sensor manufacturers are working on. Just be patient... ;-)

There is nothing wrong with high pixel counts! As long as they have excellent dynamic range, good low light, and low noise. I had the Nikon D850 loved it but it's size and weight of the camera and the lens's. But Oh how I loved being able to Crop, and when I would down size, the image even got better!

That's why I love High Pixel Sensors! Smartphones need some serious ergonomic's! I hate how clumsy they are to use, touch the screen by accident and then you have to fix that before you shoot, not my cup of tea!

Those are all known facts, and a decision one makes when buying a High Pixel count sensor. I keep all my equipment at the latest tech as much as possible, and never had a problem with my D850's large file sizes. You can't expect to cook a gourmet meal with poor cooking tools!

gskolenda,
Sure, if you are rich enough...