OmniVision, makers of camera sensors that can be found in numerous smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, has just announced a new product. The OV8850 (who comes up with these names?) is the company’s first sensor to use their 1.1 micron pixel sized second generation backside illumination technology, which is a fancy way of saying that more pixels can be shoved in the same area than was previously possibly, or in the case of the OV8850 [product brief; PDF document], it enables image sensors that are 20% thinner than the competition. How thin is the sensor itself? Just 4.5 mm, which means we’re going to see some pretty anorexic handsets coming out next year when the OV8850 starts shipping in volume in Q1 2012.
“With our new OmniBSI-2 architecture, we have further miniaturized our pixels while delivering a 20 percent improvement in peak quantum efficiency in all color channels, a 35 percent improvement in low-light sensitivity and a 45 percent increase in full-well capacity in an extremely compact and power efficient package. This 1.1-micron OmniBSI-2 pixel enables the next generation of miniaturization in mobile cameras, and is key to the high-resolution smartphone camera roadmap.” — Per Rosdahl, Senior Product Manager at OmniVision
Now don’t forget, it doesn’t matter how good your sensor is, if the piece of glass –in some cases plastic!– sitting on top of it is crap then you can expect horrible photos. There’s also post processing, which some companies do a lot of (Apple), while others don’t even bother (Motorola), resulting in a huge range of quality depending on which 8 megapixel camera phone you use. But back to the OV8850, other notable features includes the ability to capture either 720p video at 60 frames per second or 1080p video at 30 frames per second. The latter will most likely be emphasized more since it’s “Full HD” and people can’t get enough marketing hyperbole.
[Via: Anandtech]