WINNER Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX mobile image sensor

INNOVATION AWARD Phones today are not just communication devices, they are also cameras. Which is why brands work so hard at ensuring their phones take brilliant pictures. Doing this requires great camera sensors and Samsung has just provided ammunition to phone makers in the form of its ISOCELL Bright HMX mobile image sensor.

It’s a sensor that takes photos at mindboggling 108-megapixels and has a large sensor size of 1/1.33-inch. Its sheer size allows it to take photos, especially in low-light conditions. But size aside, it also has pixel-binning technologies that enable it to combine its tiny pixels to create a larger one to take bright, albeit lower resolution photos. This should mean better photos especially in challenging lighting conditions – a problem that plagues all smartphones because of their tiny sensors. Not only do you get detailed photos, but you could potentially crop in and still get very usable images without resorting to telephoto mode.

The first phones to use Samsung’s ISOCELL Bright HMX are already in the market and they seem to be capable of taking some really impressive photos. First out is Xiaomi’s Mi Note 10 Pro, and Samsung’s very own Galaxy S20 Ultra is hitting the shelves next month.

More are expected to come throughout the rest of the year so 2020 could very well turn out to be a landmark year for mobile phone photography, spearheaded by Samsung’s game-changing mobile sensor.