Hey Vlad, just wanted to say I always appreciate your posts.
Thanks!
The 20Mpix option is very interesting, and it might work.. There might be two alternatives with that.
So.. its all about pixel sizes.. lets say they take the 1/1.2'' sensor from the 808 and cut that down to 20Mpix instead of 40Mpix, which (as far as I can tell) would give them physically bigger pixels, and then then can further oversample those bigger pixels to get a better quality jpeg. The 1/1.2'' sensor cut into 41Mpix yields 1.4 micron pixels, which is no different than any of the other current top smartphones for sale, where the 808 gains a huge advantage is the fact that they take 6-7 pixels and combine them into one "bigger" one, while cleaning all the garbage (noise) in the process.
roughly .. this is what happens with the phase 1 system
So lets take that 1/1.2'' sensor and see how big the pixels would be if it was cut into 20Mpix instead of 41.
For 41Mpix:
The 808 shoots at 38Mpix max (7152 x 5368). The size of the sensor is 1/1.2'' (
10,67 mm. x 8 mm.).
There are 1000 microns in 1 mm.
10.67 х 1000 = 10 670 microns
10670 / 7152 = 1.49** microns/pixel ... I think the math is off because I am taking 38Mpix instead of 41. The 808 does shoot @ 1.4 microns for sure.
For 21Mpix (which would probably be around 18 for 16:9 and 19 for 4:3)
I will use a picture from this
Amazon.com: Sony DSC-RX100 20.2 MP Exmor CMOS Sensor Digital Camera with 3.6x Zoom: SONY: Camera & Photo for reference. It has a sensor cut into 20Mpix, and the images come out at
5472?3648
So same thing again:
Our hypothetical Lumia EOS shoots at 20Mpix max
5472?3648. The size of the sensor is 1/1.2'' (
10,67 mm. x 8 mm.).
There are 1000 microns in 1 mm.
10.67 х 1000 = 10 670 microns
10670 / 5472 =
~2.0** microns/pixel
Just to put that in perspective, the Nokia N8 shoots 1.75 microns, and to this day.. 2+ years later, there is not other smartphone (other than the 808) than can beat it in most conditions.
That is the first option.. use the sensor from the 808, cut into 20 instead of 40, and do a bit of oversampling on top.
The 2nd option is to use a smaller 20Mpix sensor, which would yield 1.4 micron pixels, and oversample those.. but see.. its one thing to have 6-7 pixels available for oversampling (808) and another to have 2-3 pixels available.. the effect won't be the same. The advantage here would be a smaller "hump".
Then there is the question of the Xenon flash, which as you can see here (808):
requires big capacitors for it to make any sense.. so the hump remains an issue, until they come up with mega powerful short burst LEDs which would eliminate the need for a xenon.
And finally.. there is something I don't know enough about, but seem to be an issue. The ratio between the pixel sizes and the sensor is directly related to the lens somehow, but I am not sure how. It seems like the bigger the pixels are, the bigger the lens needs to be.. but I am not sure at all on this one. I just know that there are issues with that.. especially for a phone.
Why are bigger pixels important.. they can collect more photons (light), and from there.. less noise, more detail.. here is how it looks for the DSLRs..
I am not saying that pixels sizes are everything in imaging, there is way more than that.. but it is a pretty important part.. especially for compact/cell phone cameras.