Galaxy Note 8 fans, you’ve one more reason to rejoice. The possibility of your long awaited smartphone coming with the dual-camera setup is even more now. Read on to figure out why.
This year’s MWC Shanghai is going just fantastic. Companies are revealing some great, new technologies that’ll shape up the smartphone industry in the 2nd half of 2017 and beyond. While Vivo piped Samsung by showing up first under-display fingerprint sensor at the conference, it doesn’t mean that Samsung didn’t have anything for itself. The Korean tech giant has used the stage to reveal its new ISOCELL brand of camera sensors, along with a new dual-camera sensor that may find its place in company’s upcoming Galaxy Note 8 flagship.
As you may know already, it’s expected from quite some time that Galaxy Note 8 will come with dual-camera setup. And now we possibly know which setup it may be, because Samsung has got its own camera sensor making brand. The company demoed first four products of its ISOCELL CMOS Image sensor brand at MWCS, which include:
- ISOCELL Bright: A sensor that can capture stunning photographs with reduced noise and high color fidelity in all kind of environments – including low light environments as well.
- ISOCELL Fast: A sensor that can quickly autofocus on objects, whether still or moving, even in low-light environments.
- ISOCELL Slim: Sensor with smaller pixel size of 0.9-1.0 um, yet capable of capturing high quality pictures. Useful for slim smartphones.
- And finally, ISOCELL Dual: A dual camera setup which can be constructed by combining a variety of two separate sensors according to requirements.
Speaking about the sensors, Ben Hur, Vice President of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics, said at MWCS:
“Samsung ISOCELL is a brand that represents the essence of our leading pixel technologies. We expect the ISOCELL brand to help consumers easily acknowledge and confide in camera performance as well as overall quality of the device. With our advanced image sensor technologies, Samsung will continue to bring innovation to cameras used in smartphones and other applications.”
Now, among these four sensors the one that should interest the Galaxy Note 8 fans is ISOCELL Dual – that’s the sensor which may find its way in next Samsung flagship. According to Forbes, which got a closer look on it, it’s a sensor with two 13mp shooters. Both shooters have got f/2.0 aperture, but one of them captures the image in RGB mode while another one captures black and white. The images are then combined by the software to create one single sharp photo.
This technology is in contrast with the one that’s seen in iPhone 7 Plus and OnePlus 5. Both those devices house a regular camera and a 2x telephoto lens in their dual-camera setups, which generates better images. LG G6 follows another approach, with one regular shooter and another ultra-wide camera, but no one comes close to iPhone 7 Plus and OnePlus 5.
What this means is that without some sophisticated engineering and option of Portrait mode, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 camera may find itself slightly behind from the competition when it comes to image quality. While Samsung has not accepted officially that this will be the camera for Note 8, there’s no reason why company would opt for a sensor from some other company when it has got its own. There’s a high probability of this sensor making its way to the Galaxy Note 8, especially because it has been demonstrated ahead of Note 8’s expected launch in August. Most of the time new technologies demonstrated by the company have been used in company’s flagship smartphones launched right after their demo.
We expect that Sammy can live up to the expectations with its dual-camera in Note 8. Because after all, this is the do-or-die device for company after Note 7 fiasco, so it should certainly ace the competition in almost every department.