Galaxy S23 will be equipped with 200-megapixel camera | Hacker News Reader

Galaxy S23 will be equipped with 200-megapixel camera

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23 pointsgeox68 comments

To put into perspective just how useless such a metric is, Canon's latest pro camera, the EOS R3, has a meager 24MP. Surely no match for the next Galaxy phone.

My Pinephone Pro is 0mp.

Yeah, the damned cameras don't even work.

It's not so much a useless metric, but there's more to photo quality than megapixel count. I'd love a Canon camera phone but it would be the size of a housebrick. In context, I'll take as many megapixels as can fit into my phone's existing format.

> In context, I'll take as many megapixels as can fit into my phone's existing format.

As many megapixels? Ceteris paribus (especially keeping the same technology), you'd probably prefer photos from a sensor with larger photosites (maybe 25MP) than this 200MP monster.

Canon's EOS RP, a mirrorless full frame camera with a removable lens, is smaller than an iPhone 13 Pro Max in every dimension besides thickness. In the past the brick size comment would've been accurate, but I would argue that it more or less isn't so anymore unless you pick up a pro camera.

HN is overly dismissive of tech in Android devices. People should look up testing of Samsung’s current gen 108 MP sensor. It’s true that it doesn’t look sharper when displaying the whole image on a smartphone’s 3.5 MP screen or a 4K (8.3 MP) monitor, and that it’s not really 9 times sharper than a quality 12 MP, but those points miss the meaningful one: it actually is way sharper than the current gen iPhone, and it is very visible as soon as you blow up the image, zoom in, or significantly crop it.

This is something I love about Samsung and Huawei: they actually force Apple to make their cameras better and better instead of just following their usual obsessions like slimming and gluing everything together.

And as always when cramming in so many pixels on such a tiny area, the sensor will produce garbage material that has to be scaled down to a fraction to look acceptable. The average consumer will of course be lyrical, because bigger number is better.

I’ve tried 108mp samsung camera and sharpness and digital zoom was incredible, provided you can keep subject stable. iPhone 13 Pro is nowhere close in this aspect.

I've seen example images from the S22 as well. In 1:1 resolution the details look like garbage even with Samsung's weird post-processing. The actual pixel-by-pixel material is not usable for anything. The image must be scaled down to alleviate the problems, forfeiting the point of such a high-res sensor.

The usual Samsung bloatware is a deal breaker. I don't care how good the camera is.

What do you use instead?

... who do you work for

Not OP, but I personally had a Samsung tablet before which made me want to never have any Samsung Android device again.

Since then it's been Motorola phones all the way (essentially unmodified Android OS), affordable, no bloatware etc.

edit: grammar

I have a OnePlus 8 and it's been OK. Not the greatest but infinitely better than Samsung's crapware infested S20 I had before.

> Android One is a family of third-party Android smartphones promoted by Google. In comparison to many third-party Android devices, which ship with a manufacturer's customized user interface and bundled apps, these devices run near-stock versions of Android with limited modifications, and a focus on Google services (although they may still feature software enhancements to support the features of included hardware, such as cameras)

See https://www.android.com/one/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One

The extras is one of the main reasons I like using a Samsung device. They're nearly as good as my Huawei was (but you can't root those anymore so they're not a purchasing option, regardless of google play restrictions which you can easily work around).

The AI hardware button Samsung added is rather dumb but otherwise the extras don't get in the way and I sorely miss them whenever I use a bare android (a large downside for Fairphone or Lineageos or grapheneos: can't even turn on a torch from the lockscreen! Let alone set a timer. And their camera apps are objectively unusable compared to ss/hw/goog stock cameras).

Loved Cyanogenmod 4.4; very disappointed by Lineage which doesn't even come with microG which is so stable and mature these days, you need to download some sort of fork for that and then you're still missing a ton of things that worked fine on stock.

Thousands of nifty customizations were made by the community to mod every aspect of Android, but approximately none survive two major android versions so there's barely anything useful that still works on Android 10 or whatever version they're at by now. This is why I root a phone straight out of the box and apply various privacy enhancements, but unfortunately can't flash a completely open source OS...

I suspect there will be some pixel binning going on. Should we expect 50 MP output? I'd believe so.

I wish there'd be more focus on actual limitations in phone photography. On phones with multiple lenses/sensors the lenses with more general purpose focal lengths are always coupled with crappier sensors than the main ~28 mm equiv ones.

No way, we should expect 14k video out of this! /s

There are some other comments here already explaining that without better optics or a larger sensor, you really won't see much improvement past a few tens of MP.

> No way, we should expect 14k video out of this!

Output resolution for video is something different altogether.

> There are some other comments here already explaining that without better optics or a larger sensor, you really won't see much improvement past a few tens of MP.

Hence my comment about pixel binning. Plenty of phones bin pixels today. Google Pixel 6 does, as an example.

Another thing... Even if the lens is not enough to resolve 50 or 200 MP it will still look better than interpolating to a larger file for print digitally.

What’s the catch, isn’t that many pixels way below the limit of what can be resolved with an aperture/lens of phone cameras?

Do the sensors actually have 200 million pixels or is it some post processing trick to make that claim

I wonder if this has something to do with "zooming" capabilities. Samsung's Galaxies already nail it and are a head and shoulder above the competition (e.g., iPhone). When there's not much room for innovation in an area, create a new need and compete there!

That was my thought too. It seems like it could provide all the benefits that we get with multiple individual lenses for telephoto, wide-angle, etc in a single lens and sensor. Probably reduces cost overall.

I doubt it. For a small sensor, crops are probably going to look like crap, unless they've got some computational photography magic to make those pixels actually count.

It doesn’t have to look great if you are after functional results - identify faces, read some text, etc

Good point on that, as a potential motivation for more pixels.

The marketing department has never heard of diffractions limits. Not a problem because most consumers haven't either. All they know is "bigger number better"

My naive assumption is that it can help with computational photography, without having to do things like sensor shift [1].

> https://digital-photography-school.com/understanding-sensor-...

I also assume that the improvement is nowhere near "linear".

To give it some context a 4K UHD television has about 8 million pixels. Feels like the main purpose of having 200 million pixels is just to have a larger number than the competition.

Considering phones rely on computational photography I'd say 200mp downsized to 4k with some clever processing probably it's what Samsung is aiming for.

Sensor size matters more than pixels (or photosites is you count individual cells forming one pixel)

https://www.androidauthority.com/camera-sensor-size-1095299/

I'm still waiting for someone to go all-in on the on the computational photography and just crust the phone backside in cameras...

It'll probably look pretty unsettling[1]

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/4/10/17218758/l...

I thought most of them were stickers. I'd be freaked out at anyone carrying that camera.

The image quality attached in the article honestly doesn't look any better than a 10-year old point and shoot digital camera. A camera that never cost more than $400 by the way.

It's insane how much marketing has to work to make people believe they're buying a superior product, when in fact it's just a $2000 toy with inferior quality.

I recall laughing at the ridiculous camera antics in Blade Runner: zooming in absurd levels, super focus, etc. Now it's happening.

What do you use as a camera?

200MP is worthless behind bad lenses. You will see high resolution blur...

After the worst possible experience with a Google Pixel 3a and then a Mi11, I'm not really sure about staying on Android. Too many bugs, too many errors...

My Mi11 proximity sensor doesn't work and during most of my calls I mute myself with my face...

How on earth can you forget about the most important feature in a phone: calling other people.

Why should be important to have the latest snapdragon CPU if it takes 4 seconds to open the camera app?

Funny that you mention that but I switched to an IPhone after 10 years on android. Phone calls is something that got dramatically better, and I was looking to improve.

But will I finally be able to take a picture that is able to capture the dark spots on a full moon? I'm not holding my breath

https://dro.pm/q.png shot with a Samsung from 2019 by hand (no tripod or so) using the stock camera in manual mode (standard mode just gives you a white-orange smear). Took the picture because it appeared oddly red, it doesn't 100% come across in the picture but it's decent, and honestly quite impressive for a few mm thick phone sensor if you ask me.

I see the major dark areas, is that what you mean?

The link isn't working, or I would let you know

Am I the only person who doesn't get excited about cameras, but gets really excited about foldable form factor phones?

Well, if those 200 million photocells actually performed on par with iPhone's 12 million cells in terms of ISO performance and SNR, that would be spectacular if combined with the right processor.

Sadly, we all know it's just a numbers show gimmick and pathetic that their 200 million can't still beat 12 million.

An optical sensor hoovering up that much information is going to need storage, and also decent editing software, if we're to do anything more than note how old we all look in selfies.

One imagines that the extra data will help to de-jitter video, though.

I guess if you run out things to innovate on, you start some arbitrary numbers race

I don’t think many people actually care about the number as much as Samsung likes to think they do.

I am a tech nerd commenting on hacker news. I have an iPhone 12 Pro and I really don’t know how many pixels my camera has. 12?

Numbers - s means plural. No we don't - it's all about function and facility.

Please describe your iPhone (12 Pro) camera's vital statistics, so we can make a useful comparison.

[Your comment changed quite drastically whilst I commented]

Yup, 12 megapixel (x3 cameras).

The best (available to normal consumers) full-frame cameras are under 50 megapixel.

Makes me think the 200 megapixel camera in the phone is a bit of a scam. At best a completely ridiculous and mostly meaningless number.

  200 million pixels * 3 (RGB) bytes per pixel = 600MB per photo.

Hope they're getting a good compression ratio or coming out with TB sized hard drives.

My current phone does 8 million pixels in about 2.0 MB at the default settings (raw pixel data is 8×3=24MB, compressing down losslessly to 15 MB). I remember back in the good old days, my mom's digital camera also produced jpegs of about 2.5 megabytes.

Ten bucks on that one of these 200Mpx photos won't exceed 4 MB with Samsung's default settings.

Fwiw there have been significant improvements in image quality despite the file size not increasing, so 2MB was probably overkill in the past. 4MB might simply be a suitable size. It won't be anywhere near 600.

Why do we need so many pixels? Aren't lenses way more important?

Can’t beat the iPhone on speed, better inflate some other number.

Probably won’t beat it on image quality either

Let's blame them for trying?

iPhone and galaxy s series cameras usually go head to head every generation and reviews are mixed, there's no clear winner.

Usually iPhones are unquestionable winners in video quality and getting consistently good photos every time. Samsungs are a mixed bag with photos, sometimes really good photos, sometimes bad. In a course of a day or a holiday where I’m taking photos/videos in various scenarios without thinking about it too much, a much higher percentage of iPhone’s media is usable in say, making a montage, than any androids I’ve tried.

In summary, for your day to day needs, iPhones are clear winners every time.

200-megapixel camera will be equipped with a phone.

Hmm is a pixel a pixel eg. Sony Alpha 2 vs. this

> Apple mounts a folded camera on the iPhone 15

Not sure where these guys are getting their "facts" from but I'd take this article with a wheelbarrow of salt

Does that mean 200MB sized image files?

S22 has 108 mega pixel and its file size is around 15MB. So 200 mega pixel's file size won't be more than 30mb, unless it's using different compression.

so ... photos now take up more storage space? can't see any other "benefit"

Yes, that is a lot of data that needs to be stored on consumer flash storage and SD cards. The manufacturers of those will certainly like this trend... I wonder who they are /s

that's crazy. my 150$ phone takes amazing pictures with 10MP camera.

No it doesn’t

Enhance!

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