Samsung 150 Megapixel ISOCELL Sensor Might Be In The Works

Although it has always had a foot in the digital imaging market thanks to its camera business, it was only in the past few years that Samsung applied all of that to its mobile products. In fact, it has turned its mobile imaging sensors into a product and business of its own while proving to have some of the best silicon in that arena. Riding on that bout of popularity, Samsung is unsurprisingly now reported to be working on its next ISOCELL sensor, one that will boast no less than 150 million pixels in a small square space.

Samsung made headlines last year when it unveiled the market's first smartphone camera sensor to boast 105 megapixels. An even higher version of that, formally called the ISOCELL Bright HM1, made its way to the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G and is credited for some of that phone's impressive output. It's only normal that Samsung would only go up from there and a fresh new rumor reveals just how high it will try to reach.

This still-unnamed ISOCELL product will reportedly have 150 megapixels crammed in a 1-inch sensor. Like the Bright HM1, it will use Samsung's new Nonacell technology that combines 9 adjacent pixels (3x3 pixels) into one to create a 16 megapixel image that contains more information than a regular 16MP photo. In comparison, the 105 megapixel ISOCELL Bright HM1 only produced a 12MP pixel-binned output.

According to the rumor, the first phone that will use this would be a Xiaomi flagship to be launched near the end of 2020. This will be followed by OPPO and Vivo in the first quarter of 2021. That seems to mirror the same scenario that happened with the ISOCELL Bright HMX last year.

Of course, it's too early to put confidence in such rumors though the pattern does seem to hold. In any case, it might be unlikely that Samsung will put that new sensor in the Galaxy Note 20 later this year and will probably prepare a special variant again for next year's Galaxy S flagship.