OmniVision may be a company you’ve never heard of, but chances are that at least one of the mobile phones you’ve previously owned has had their CMOS image sensors inside. At CES they announced something new and actually quite unique. It’s the OV10810, product names can’t get any sexier than that, and it has the ability to take 10 megapixels photos while recording 1080p video at the same time. Useful if you’re a parent, taking a video of your child walking for the first time, and then there’s a particularly cute face that your baby is making. Tap the screen and that moment is captured while the video continues being captured! The 1/2.5 inch sensor features pixels that are only 1.4 microns large, they feature back side illumination to enable improved low light sensitivity, and best of all this isn’t some sort of fantasy product that’s due to sample by the time the 7th generation iPhone comes out, this puppy is already in the hands of manufacturers and is going to come to products that might ship this year.
As the cameras in our mobile phones get more powerful, we’ve got to remember that there’s a lot more than the number of megapixels inside that make or break picture quality. The post proposing that gets applied to images, plus the optics that actually sit on top of the sensor, make a huge difference between a photo that’s rich enough to be used as a magazine cover or pixelated enough that you can instantly tell it was taken with a phone.
Rumors say that the next generation iPhone will feature an 8 megapixel camera sensor from OmniVision, so the OV10810 isn’t going to be in the iPhone 5, but Mobile World Congress is next week, so you may see something announced that packs this imaging powerhouse under those infamous black shiny plastic cases we all love to hate.