Samsung Electronics has announced that it has begun mass production of the industry’s first 0.64-micrometer (μm)-pixel image sensor — Samsung ISOCELL JN1. The 50-megapixel sensor comes equipped with the latest technologies such as Enhanced ISOCELL 2.0, Smart-ISO and Double Super PDAF.
The company claims that the Samsung JN1, which uses ISOCELL 2.0 technology, can improve light sensitivity by around 16 percent. With all the technologies embedded into a small 1/2.76-inch optical format, it is touted to be the most versatile image sensor yet from the South Korean giant.
The JN1 is also compatible with existing 1/2.8-inch products, allowing the sensor to be used for front-facing, ultra-wide, or telephoto cameras, in addition to standard wide camera options. It can also reduce the height of the camera module by around 10-percent, minimizing the camera bulge for slimmer and more streamlined designs.
For low-light photography, it uses Samsung’s four-to-one pixel binning technology, Tetrapixel, which merges four adjacent 0.64μm-pixels into one big 1.28μm-pixel to quadruple light sensitivity for brighter photos.
There’s also Smart-ISO that changes the conversion gain based on the environment’s illumination level. Smart-ISO uses Low ISO mode in bright settings to retain detail in the highlights, and High ISO in low-lit environments to reduce readout noise and generate excellent low-light performance.
The sensor also comes with improved Double Super PD which features twice the density of pixels (1/16) used for phase detection than Super PD (1/32), enabling the same auto-focus performance even in environments with about 60-percent less illumination levels.
It supports up to 4K resolution video recording at 60 frames-per-second (fps) or full HD at 240fps. Samsung says that the JN1 50-megapixel image sensor is currently in mass production and soon be used in smartphones.
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