Samsung on Monday launched a new page advertising its latest ISOCELL camera sensors, at least some of which are likely to be implemented into the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus, the company’s latest pair of Android flagships set to be announced next month. The move marks the second addition to the imaging sensor brand that Samsung only made official last year, with the modules promising to allow for a next-generation mobile photography experience. The ISOCELL Bright sensor takes advantage of Tetracell, Samsung’s proprietary technology which merges four adjacent pixels and processes them as a single unit with the goal of improving low-light performance. The sensor comes with support for Samsung’s Smart WDR functionality which quickly takes multiple exposures for a single shot in order to enhance the level of detail in any given image but is also said to be particularly beneficial in poorly lit scenarios.
In the same vein, the design of the three-stack ISOCELL Fast sensor is said to accelerate the camera’s autofocusing capabilities in all situations, especially those in which light is scarce and subjects may be hard to separate from their backgrounds. Super Phase Detection Autofocus is part of the software support package here, with the name apparently denoting Samsung’s latest take on PDAF that’s still enabled by its Dual Pixel CMOS AF technology. The original equipment manufacturer also revealed the ISOCELL Slim, a sensor with a relatively self-explanatory name meant to provide the optimal compromise between physical hardware size and image quality. The module is extremely small compared to the average mobile sensor, having a pixel size of only 0.9µm. For reference, the main sensor of the Galaxy Note 8 (S5K2L2) was of the 1.44µm variety. Samsung claims this particular device offers a level of performance that’s unprecedented for its physical footprint.
Finally, the South Korean tech giant unveiled the ISOCELL Dual, a sensor specifically designed to make two-lens setups more versatile, allowing for optical zoom, software-based out-of-focus effects, and general depth sensing capabilities. The company goes as far as to claim this solution will deliver “DSLR-like” results and while that seems improbable, it’s likely to constitute yet another technological breakthrough in the mobile photography field. The series can capture images with resolutions ranging from 12 to 24 megapixels, depending on the model. All of the newly announced sensors will be made available to third-party OEMs and some of them should be commercialized with the Galaxy S9 lineup scheduled to be announced late next month as part of Samsung’s MWC 2018 conference in Barcelona, Spain.
