South Korea tech blog TheElec has reported that Samsung may leave out the 3D ToF (Time of Flight) feature on the Galaxy S21 that would kickstart the company’s flagship lineup next year. The website attributes the disclosure to have come from people familiar with the matter. The major reason for the removal is said to be a lack of “killer contents” that uses ToF.
Time of Flight (ToF) is a feature which propels augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) contents in a 5G environment. The feature made its debut last year on Samsung phones beginning with the Galaxy S10 and later on the Galaxy Note10. The Korean giant also launched the Galaxy S20 series with a ToF sensor.
There were speculations that Samsung included the ToF on its flagship smartphones to rival those of Apple and Huawei ‘s flagships. However, the feature has not been as successful as Apple.s because it utilises indirect ToF, unlike Apple that uses direct ToF through LiDAR sensors on its iPad Pro tablets.
Samsung’s ToF modules measure distance by calculating the phase differences of the light sine waves when they are sent out to the object and when they bounce back. The difference in widths of the two waves is used to measure the time.
The range of such a method requires strong light with large wave widths, but accuracy drops in long distances. Samsung’s ToF had a range of 3 meters. In contrast, Apple’s ToF has a range of 6 meters. The company’s ToF method measures the time it takes for the light to bounce off an object.
The direct ToF image sensors are manufactured only by Sony and the Japanese company has an exclusive deal with Apple. Since this is the case, Samsung can’t use these sensors due to this and instead purchased the indirect ToF image sensors from the Japanese company through the S10 to S20 series.
Samsung’s System LSI business is said to be developing a direct ToF module. The South Korean tech giant will likely reconsider applying ToF depending on how this development pans out and how the market receives the ToF modules of the iPhone 12 series.
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