Phones to sport 48 MP cameras

■ Honor, Xiaomi aim to cater to users who want sharp images from phones

The race for 48- megapixel camera hots up as Chinese smartphone maker Honor entered the fray with its View 20 smartphone, according to reports.

Earlier this year, both Sony and Samsung had announced 48- megapixel image sensors for smartphones. Now, the company are willing to leverage these sensors to provide better pixel count in their devices.

Honor said that the View 20, which uses Sony’s IMX586 sensor with Huawei’s Kirin 980 processor and the same “hole- punch” selfie camera design as Huawei’s upcoming Nova 4, will sport a 48 megapixel rear camera.

While Honor remains tight lipped about further details ahead of the launch on January 22 in Paris, the View 20 will be the successor to the mid- range View 10 that impressed many earlier this year.

China, however, would remain witness to an early launch of the V20 variant on December 26.

Chinese smartphone maker and rival Xiaomi, which has a considerable presence in India, is also set to release a 48- megapixel phone in January. Lin Bin, the company’s co- founder and president, teased the phone by posting a picture to Weibo of an unidentified device bearing the legend “48MP camera” beside the lens.

While the race is still to early to call a winner, one question that remains in the back of our minds is if we really need a a 48MP camera.

Nokia, in 2012, tried its its luck with the 808 Pureview that sported a 41MP rear camera.

Since then, only Huawei — Honor’s parent brand — has come close with the 40MP in the P20 Pro.

However, specs rarely tell the full story when it comes to image quality. And bigger doesn’t always mean the better. That is especially true for an image sensor in a smartphone. With the space pretty small, there’s a lower amount of space for the light to hit. The higher the megapixels count, the less light can reach the sensor.

This is one of the prime reasons why smartphone makers have dropped out of the megapixel arms race and stuck around 1216MP as it is considered to be a sweet spot with enough megapixels and space for light.