Samsung has unveiled today a new camera sensor technology — called BRITECELL — that will markedly improve low-light performance, a photography variable that has gained a lot of attention in recent years (thanks to the Lumia line).
So how does this work? By making smaller pixels — 1.12um to 1.0um — reducing the module height by 17% and increasing the pixel count up to 20MP. It is sort of counter-intuitive to see smaller pixels perform better in capturing light (conventional wisdom mandates bigger pixels are better at capturing light). The pixel density is a by-product of the real change in technology, though, which is how the pixels are arranged. Traditionally, pixels are RGB — red, green, blue — and by removing the green pixels and replacing them with white pixels, Samsung claims it is able to capture more light.
Would be interesting to see if this technology appears in the S7 line next year, and whether it will also be later adopted in its digital cameras and DSLRs. The race for low-light photography dominance is still on.
Source: Samsung
