Sony CEO Lets Slip That iPhone 5 Will Have 8MP Camera

An anonymous reader writes "During a recent interview with Walt Mossberg, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer may have inadvertently let it slip that Sony plans to supply Apple with 8 megapixel cameras for the next-gen iPhone. While discussing the Japanese earthquake, Stringer noted that Sony's camera sensor plant in Sendai had been affected and that shipments of 8 megapixel camera sensors to Apple were subsequently delayed."

Comments

Yeah, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares?

Re:Yeah, but..

[postbigbang]

And in other news, there was news.

Good Lord

[matty619]

This is news?

BFD

[damnfuct]

More megapixels means more noise if you don't increase the size of the detector.

Re:BFD

[kimvette]

What you say is true only with a given sensor type/technology. As megapixels counts increase, most manufacturers manage to increase the S/N ratio at the detection and amplification stages often resulting in a net improvement in image quality. Compare yesteryear's 2 megapixel DSLRs or even medium format camera backs to today's 18-24 megapixel DSLRs. The original DSLR cameras were limited to maybe ISO1600 max and were very, very noisy, whereas with today's DSLRs if you expose properly you can shoot at ISO1600-3200 or even ISO6400 all day long, or if you are underexposing slightly, moderate noise reduction can clean the image right up with little loss in image quality. Severely underexposed images though (by like, 2+ stops) will exhibit more noise and thus more loss of detail after postprocessing but ISO 1600 won't be a problem in almost any case with any current DSLR body from the major players.

The problem with your theory is we are not comparing apples to apples. Photosite size reduction/megapixel increase is not the sole advancement between most generations of sensor.

Re:BFD

[CoreWalker]

On the contrary, if the comparison was referencing differences between the iPhone4 and the iPhone5, then we are indeed comparing Apples to Apples.


ps. Sadly, I have been waiting about 25 years to use that joke.

Re:Inadvertent

[EdZ]

"Inadvertisment" might also be applicable.

I don't buy it

[abhi_beckert]

This rumor isn't credible. 8MP is a bad idea unless you make the lens and sensor bigger. The trouble is, as you increase the megapixels you reduce the amount of light the sensor can collect. Creating significantly poorer photos in low light conditions and slightly poorer photos in normal conditions.

If you have a huge lens and sensor, like some phones and like a point-and-shoot camera then 8MP (or more) is a great idea. But apple isn't likely to do either of those.

They already made the lens and sensor about as good as they could in the iPhone 4. I think we're a long time away from seeing an 8MP iPhone camera.

Re:I don't buy it

[damnfuct]

I wish more people understood this rather than "MOAR MEGGAPIXALS MEENS MOAR BETTAR"

Re:I don't buy it

[farnsworth]

your average iPhone consumer will only know that 'more pixels' = 'better'.

Your average iPhone user will, however, quickly realize that photos suck if the sensor is too small. Apple never makes stuff to compete in checklists, they make stuff they believe will be regarded as high-quality. Apple would never slap an "8 megapixels!" sticker on the iPhone in hopes that it would appeal to more people. Apple's stuff is nearly always the worst spec'ed stuff on the market, yet it is also the most coveted and they consistently have the highest customer satisfaction in the industry. They know how to put stuff together for real life.

I don't know enough about the technology to comment on whether a good-quality 8MP camera is feasible in this size, but Apple will never build something that sucks just so they can have a higher number in some feature table.

Re:I don't buy it

[zalas]

Just a nitpick, but...

• Increasing the number of megapixels while keeping everything else the same does not change the amount of light the sensor collects, although each individual pixel gets less light.
• Increasing or decreasing the fill-factor or changing the total sensor size does.
• In low light situations, statistics of the intensity of light should be Poisson, which means that 4 pixels at 1/4 the area, when averaged together, should result in the same amount of SNR, assuming relatively small read noise, which should be dominated by the Poisson shot noise in this situation.
• Thus, the only downside of having just more pixels on a sensor if everything else was equal (note that fill factor of pixels would probably be different between different sensors) is that there's now a lot more bandwidth coming out of the sensor, which could be an issue with power efficiency. This could possibly be mitigated by reducing the bit depth on each individual pixel, if you assume there's going to be more noise.
• One upside is that if the pixel size is smaller than the diffraction spot size, then the relative size of your Bayer mosaic should make demosaicing easier.
• To summarize... if you had more pixels in the same sized sensor and can deal with the extra bandwidth, then you should be able to, in the worst case, downsample to achieve similar or higher performance compared to what you had before.

Re:I don't buy it

[doctor_no]

There have been a lot of technology advancements that dramatically increase the amount of light each photosite can collect. The biggest is BSI (back side illuminated) sensors which can double the amount of light that gets captured per photosite. We are also moving to high-dynamic range, high-speed, and pixel-binning CMOS technology that can combine signal data from multiple photosites into one.

http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2011/02/sony-announces-12mp-155um-pixel-bsi.html

In general you will get better quality from a larger sensor, all things being equal, but technology has moved considerably forward. 1~2 micron photosites (that are common in cellphones) can easily handle 8MPs. But don't expect it to take the same quality as a dSLR (or even the larger sensored point and shoots).

Re:I don't buy it

[errandum]

Like an antennae that is so high tech that it requires you to use a rubber band for optimum performance?

Or phone screens that are prone to develop a yellow tint?

Apple's story is full of mishaps.. Those two were introduced as revolutionary and cutting edge, and on paper they were... But then real world scenarios proved them wrong.

On the other hand, it is possible to have a decent camera in a phone, like the nokia N8 proved, and apple might do it, Just don't paint apple as the tech messiah.

Re:I don't buy it

[thegarbz]

What you say is true if and only if the design actually allows for that downsizing. Now what consumer camera on the market has a high megapixels sensor and then downsamples to increase noise performance? It's a numbers game. It will affect noise. Also there is another valid reason lower megapixels mean less noise. Other than there being less gaps between pixels thus greater fill for the same sensor, a larger physical photosite will absorb photons at greater angles off perpendicular. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I doubt that this 8mpxl on a pinhead sensor features an expensive microlens structure you find in DSLR sensors that reduce the loss due to reflection oh photons that don't hit them at just the right angle.

Re:I don't buy it

[LWATCDR]

You do not have to make a lens that much larger to double the area. Also take a look at Nokia's phones they have very good 8MP cameras and optics on them. At this point you sound like an Apple ad. Today the Iphone 4s hardware is at best just Okay. They still have a very good display but the CPU is just okay. IOS is still a very good OS but the hardware really needs an update to stay on top including the camera.

Re:I don't buy it

[OneAhead]

You're absolutely right, but although light collection (and the quantum physical fact that light interacts with matter in the form of discrete photons, which puts a hard limit on the sensor's sensitivity/noisiness) is the most important reason why 8MP is ridiculous, it's not the [i]only[/i] reason. If it were, someone might argue that it still will be possible to make pixel-sharp low-noise images on a sunny summer day. No such luck, because of diffraction. The size of the optics required to focus light on a spot as small as the pixels on an 8MP sensor will be larger than anything that will ever fit in an iPhone package. In fact, a significant percentage of compact cameras currently on the market don't have large enough optics for a typical 8MP sensor. I'm really hoping that this time, they'll turn out to have driven the megapixel myth too far, with iPhone users complaining about grainy and blurry pictures, and the idiocy of the megapixel madness getting exposed to the general public. I know, I know, but a man can dream... http://6mpixel.org/en/?page_id=32

Re:I don't buy it

[Provocateur]

No, Steve will convince with a wave of his hand, not unlike the Dark Lords before him, that this is exactly what you are looking for.

Pray that he does not find your lack of faith disturbing.

Re:LOL. nokia n8 has 12mpx, pixon has 12mpx since

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize, that other than raw numbers, megapixels have very little to do with final quality?

Re:Meh

[Jugalator]

QSXGA

Quad Super Xtended Graphics Array... This is among the most annoying acronyms I know! Ahh!

Easier to just say "5 MP" about that, if it's the resolution others are talking about.

But with that out of my system - I wonder who in their right state of mind are actually going to print either 5 MP or 8 MP photos from a mobile phone on an A3-sized (Tabloid-sized for US citizens) sheet of paper?? It's obvious that they're once again just doing the old Megapixel race for no good reason.

Re:LOL. nokia n8 has 12mpx, pixon has 12mpx since

[kimvette]

You do realize that cellphone sensors are limited by diffraction so while you can resolve finer detail through unsharp masks, physics does limit the usable resolution of optical sensors. Making things worse, the need for anti-aliasing filters will further soften the photos. APS-C DSLRs have reached the point where they are diffraction limited to f/8.0 and yet while the megapixel race has slowed down a bit, it has not yet ended. If you need a 100% crop from the newest APS-C cameras, it requires minor to moderat sharpening during postprocessing. As the sensor size decreases the circle of confusion becomes relatively larger as the photo sites ("pixels") decrease.

Unless they find some way to increase the lens size (which will require bending space-time) the megapixel race is utterly pointless, because the resulting photos will either appear softer and softer, or more and more artificial due to requiring more and more sharpening.

Re:LOL. nokia n8 has 12mpx, pixon has 12mpx since

[bemymonkey]

Making things worse, the need for anti-aliasing filters will further soften the photos.

Soften? Pastelify, blur, undetailify, and just generally fuck up are terms that much better describe what noise reduction filters in typical cell phone cameras do to pictures. :(

I want a 1.3-2MP sensor in my next phone...

Re:"Oops"

[Z00L00K]

8 megapixels is nothing special, what is interesting is if the sensor can provide good pictures.

You can get great pictures with a 4 megapixel sensor. The noise level of the sensor and the optics is a lot more important.

Sony is in bed with Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I care because I didn't know that Sony supplied components to Apple. Maybe I have just been living in a cave or something....but I didn't know.

And now that I DO know, Apple is on my do-not-buy list.

I hate Sony THAT much. And you should too.

Re:Sony is in bed with Apple?

[UnknowingFool]

Sony provides parts to many different companies as they have so many different companies. If your criteria is to avoid all Sony parts, you may have to avoid electronics altogether.

Re:Sony is in bed with Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I care because I didn't know that Sony supplied components to Apple. Maybe I have just been living in a cave or something....but I didn't know.

And now that I DO know, Apple is on my do-not-buy list.

I hate Sony THAT much. And you should too.

Pshaw. Apple has been every bit as evil as Sony, shitting on their customers since the 2nd gen iPod. If you had any real ethics, you wouldn't have been buying Apple products, either.

Re:Sony is in bed with Apple?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Apple has been every bit as evil as Sony

No, they haven't. Not even close.

Re:LOL. nokia n8 has 12mpx, pixon has 12mpx since

[evilgrug]

3 years ahead in camera technology, 6 years behind in smartphone OS technology!

MOAR MEGAPICKLES!

[grantek]

If there's areas on a computing device that you can't really improve, and you still want people to plod along the upgrade path, just bump the numbers - like in the ca. 2000 "Mhz wars".

Re:"Oops"

[AK Marc]

Digital zoom with zero sensor noise is no different than optical zoom (given the circumstances you offered where you are willing to trade MP for zoom). So picking 3 MP with 3x vs 50 MP with no zoom will leave you with half the usable data (presuming the unlikely event that what you want to zoom in on is 100% filling a 3x zoom window, and leave you with even less if that isn't the case).