A new Samsung ISOCELL HP2 sensor shows some promising tech beyond the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 200MP headlines
Excitement is building in the lead-up to the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s unveiling at Samsung Unpacked 2023 on February 1. And as a camera aficionado, I’m particularly interested in the 200MP main sensor that’s rumored to debut on the smartphone, which could help it deliver even greater photographic versatility than the S22 Ultra.
Samsung has already produced a 200MP sensor – the ISOCELL HP1 – that is used by the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra and Xiaomi 12T Pro, but you can’t find one in a Samsung handset… yet.
The S23 Ultra is rumored to debut the next iteration of this 200MP sensor – the ISOCELL HP2 chip (opens in new tab) – that Samsung recently shared a lot of insightful info about. In short, the S23 Ultra is touted as the most significant Galaxy camera upgrade in five years and, on paper, it should replace the S22 Ultra as offering the best camera phone experience to date.
Yet 200 million pixels isn’t necessarily the most interesting feature of the flagship S23 Ultra’s potential camera. There’s a bunch of new tech packed into this sensor that should benefit color reproduction, dynamic range and autofocus power, among other things. So strap in as we unpack the potential implications of the new sensor being used in the S23 Ultra and what to expect.
200 million pixels is one heck of a selling point and a heck of a lot of pixels – almost twice the amount as the 108MP ISOCELL HM3 in the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. To put that in context, the highest resolution on a mainstream professional camera is currently 100MP (on the medium-format Fujifilm GFX100S) and 61MP for a full-frame camera like the Sony A7R V. And these are serious cameras with huge sensors.
And rather than asking, “do I even need all those pixels?” (after all, most people aren’t going to produce huge printed images from their smartphone, demonstrated in this Samsung ad (opens in new tab)), the question is instead, “how does Samsung maximize the quality of the camera for real day to day use?” The broad answer is that the sensor is doing a lot behind the scenes.
