Samsung wants to beat Sony on phone camera sensors

APD NEWS

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Samsung has a leading market share in many businesses, and now it wants one more: the image sensors in our phone cameras.

The South Korean tech giant also sets clear target to beat out its Japanese competitor Sony, as reported by South Korean IT news site ETNews.

Sony is the current leading player with its IMX series in iPhones, Xiaomi phones and even Samsung products.

But the market is expanding as more and more phones today use dual-camera design.

The surge of demand for image sensors could be a great chance for Samsung to take more market share.

What's the difference?

The two companies have similar technologies that enables our smartphones to shoot slow-motion video.

Their sensors can capture as many as 960 pictures per second, while most phone screen can only display 60 frames per second (fps).

That means the video can be played 16 times slower than reality, without losing any smoothness or introducing flickers.

Slow motion is often used to capture liquid drops.

Slow motion requires great data processing ability, thus can be used as an image sensor benchmark.

Sony's Xperia XZ2, released on February 26, can shoot 1080p videos at 960fps, while Samsung's Galaxy S9 can do the same thing at 720p.

The iPhone X, released in November last year, uses Sony's Exmor RS sensor, as data on GSMArena shows. The phone can only shoot 240fps video.

Although Samsung's new sensor lags one step behind Sony on phones, the company still has another great advantage: production capacity.

As ETNews reports, Samsung is actively converting some memory chip production lines into image sensor ones. After the conversion, Samsung will likely have a larger capacity than Sony.

(CGTN)