Your telephone helps a 320MP digital camera, however corporations select to skip it

The smartphone trade has been by way of a brutal megapixel conflict over the previous couple of years, leaping to 48MP, 50MP, 64MP, and 108MP cameras. Firms then upped the ante in 2022 and 2023 by providing 200MP digital camera telephones, and we’ve stayed at this decision since then.

Do you know that current flagship Android telephones truly assist greater than 200MP sensors, although? The truth is, they assist 320MP cameras. Nonetheless, corporations haven’t adopted 320MP cameras simply but. Right here’s why.

Wait, my telephone helps 320MP cameras?

Yep, in the event you purchased a high-end Android telephone within the final two years, there’s an opportunity it truly helps 320MP cameras. That’s as a result of most chipmakers have now enabled 320MP assist of their current flagship processors.

This development began with MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000, which powered a number of Android telephones in 2022. The Taiwanese chipmaker continued to supply this function in its subsequent high-end SoCs. In the meantime, Samsung’s Exynos 2400 chip additionally helps 320MP cameras. Qualcomm was late to the occasion and solely hopped on this development with the present Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

So, in the event you purchased a telephone just like the OnePlus 13, the Samsung Galaxy S25 collection, or the vivo X200 Professional, your telephone may technically make use of a 320MP digital camera. The truth is, older gadgets just like the Exynos-equipped Galaxy S24/S24 Plus and vivo X100 Professional additionally assist this functionality.

The largest cause why we haven’t truly seen telephones with 320MP cameras is that there merely aren’t any 320MP smartphone digital camera sensors in the marketplace but from main suppliers. We’ve heard rumors for some time that Samsung Semiconductor is engaged on this tech, however there’s been no announcement till now.

The excellent news is that Samsung beforehand said that its final objective was to create a digital camera sensor that matched the human eye’s decision (~600MP), so 320MP could be a stepping stone to get there.

It’s additionally price noting that chipmakers solely provide rudimentary snapshot assist for 320MP cameras at this stage. Meaning no multi-frame picture processing or different superior methods to spruce up the ultimate image. Historical past already reveals us that full-resolution 200MP photos don’t essentially look nice, so I’d anticipate full-resolution 320MP pictures to be equally underwhelming.

However, the truth that these main chipmakers all settled on 320MP digital camera assist strongly means that telephones with these cameras shall be a matter of “when” and never “if.”