If there was one thing that was common to most smartphone brands in 2019, then it was to pack in as many megapixels they could in the phone cameras. Be it Xiaomi, Realme, Honor, even OnePlus and Samsung couldn’t resist the lure of the megapixel race. First came 48, then 64 and now 108MP camera is also in the works. In this modern-day version of the arms race, two bigwigs have been conspicuously absent and they are: Apple and Google.
It’s not as if both these tech giants didn’t launch new phones but kept their cameras simple on paper yet extremely powerful in the inside. So how did Apple and Google deliver cameras without the megapixel blitzkrieg like others? Two words: computational photography.
The manner in which other brands seem to falling over each other to give users as many megapixels may lead some to believe that it is the be all and end all of smartphone photography. The reality is that megapixels is just one part of the package and not the package itself.
The Apple iPhone still has a camera that has 12MP sensors — three of them in the 11 Pro series and two in the iPhone 11. Google with its Pixel smartphones is considered a benchmark for smartphone cameras hasn’t ventured beyond the 16MP mark.
Smartphone cameras traditionally use something called Bayer-filters to colour into the sensor’s pixels. Xiaomi, Realme, others all use something called quad-Bayer filters – at least for the 48MP cameras – under which four pixels come under a single colour filter. Now, this quad filter ultimately produces a quarter of the resolution but full resolution to light sensitivity. It’s not as is computational photography is the core trademark of Apple and Google as at the end of the its image algorithm that lead to pixel binning that is the basic technique of the 48MP+ camera sensors. Yet, Apple and Google rely on software and advanced level of image processing to deliver great images without piling in the megapixels.
Google, while unveiling the Pixel 4 series of smartphones, showed some stellar images of night time photography that were clicked by its ‘meagre’ 16MP sensor. Google relies on its Neural Core chip to handle almost all photography related tasks like dual exposure controls, astrophotography mode, Night Sight.
Perhaps next year both these tech behemoths might fall prey to the megapixel race but 2019 was the year when they marched to their own tune rather than following the market 'beat'.
Top Comment
sourabh patwa
(1549 days ago)
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