Samsung Predicts 200MP Telephoto Cameras to Be Next Major Industry Trend

Samsung plans to make use of the telephoto lenses as a "second main camera" on smartphones. By that, the business is referring to the fact that existing telephoto lenses have smaller, lower-resolution sensors and lag behind the phone's primary camera in terms of HDR and video frame rates.

The tele module needs a sensor good enough for the main camera to function properly as a second main camera, and Samsung believes that its 200MP ISOCELL HP2 and HP3 sensors are the best options for the task.

Some smartphones that don't quite have the cash for a separate telephoto lens already employ 200MP sensors. These sensors often provide 2x and 4x zoom at the same resolution (12.5MP, which is also frequently the primary camera's default setting).

In situations when the user zooms in past the focal length of the lens, they may even outperform a low-resolution sensor with a long lens because of their abundance of pixels. Here is a 4x zoom that combines 3x optical and 1.3x digital zoom for a nearly 3.9x total and has a 200MP sensor and an 11MP sensor.

What we now have is this. In the future, Samsung's 200MP sensors may be used in conjunction with a 3x telephoto lens, at which point they will provide 3x, 6x, and 12x magnification

Here is an illustration of what can be done with one of these cameras:

The 1/1.3" and 1/1.4" ISOCELL HP2 and HP3 sensors, respectively, have a lot in common. The 4x4 Tetra2Pixel layout of the sensors is rearranged into RGB using a 4x4 deep-learning remosaic method. The quick DSPs and GPUs of contemporary smartphone chipsets are used for this. These are high-end sensors that are superior to the standard sensor used in telephoto cameras today, and they also have improved autofocus and HDR features.

Telephoto lenses are important for portrait photography, according to Samsung. To begin with, the primary camera on today's phones is far too broad for a nice portrait and distorts the image. Longer lenses are recommended because of this.

Additionally, telephoto lenses inherently produce bokeh to help distinguish the subject from the backdrop. Additionally, even though bokeh in computational photography nowadays is generally rather nice, things can still go wrong. These HP sensors will be helpful for portrait pictures as well, according to Samsung, who points out that a bigger sensor will provide a deeper depth of focus than a smaller one at the same focal length.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is rumored to contain a 50MP 3x camera (up from 10MP 3x on the S23 Ultra), which will support native 3x and 6x zoom, although that's still less than the fictitious 200MP 3x camera seen above. We won't likely see it until the following year, but since the corporation is talking about it now, it most likely already has a prototype in the lab.

Of course, this is an alternative to Sony's strategy, which employs lenses with changeable focal lengths similar to those used in conventional cameras. Currently, only Xperia phones have these lenses, although other manufacturers are experimenting with them as well.