While most of you were blown away by the 14MP beast on the Altek Leo, it looks like Sony has developed a camera that will trump that and bring along 1080p HD video with it. The 16 MP Exmor R-based CMOS sensor will be landing in devices next year (which is only a couple of months away).
“IMX081PQ” is world’s first*1 type 1/2.8 back-illuminated CMOS image sensor which realizes 16.41 effective megapixel resolution, and adopts the industry’s smallest*1 unit pixel size of 1.12μm achieved by the fine pixel fabrication process technology. In theory, when a unit pixel size is made smaller, there are also some issues such as color mixture among smaller unit pixels. Sony solved this problem by implementing a unique formation of photo diodes optimally designed for fine pixel structure to realize a CMOS image sensor with high resolution, high sensitivity and low noise.
So what can this camera do exactly?
- Shoots 1080p HD
- 30 FPS recording
- Uses back-illumination to reduce image noice
For the slim devices where hardware size matters, Sony has developed an 8.13 MP little brother to the one above and this hardware will be offered to manufactures starting in January, so it looks like the camera war is under way. Keep in mind megapixels aren’t everything when it comes to capturing decent pictures, but it sure is appealing. We’ll just have to wait and see the image/video samples from this bad boy.