Once upon a time, 8 megapixels on asmartphonecamerawas a big deal.
50 megapixels used to be impressive.
Then 100 MP phones arrived and that was neat too, I guess.
But does anyone really want200megapixels?
Thats what Motorola seems to be banking on with its upcoming flagship phones.
Lenovos general manager posted an image teasing a 200-megapixel smartphone onWeibo(Lenovo owns Motorola).
Lets be clear: 200 megapixels on a phone is overkill.
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For reference, 4K is a measly 8.3 megapixels while 8K is only 33.2 megapixels.
Again, there are some benefits to that kind of detail.
When smartphones use such high resolutions, they rarely actually end up producing high-megapixel photos.
So instead of a 200-megapixel photo, you will likely end up with a 12-ish megapixel photo instead.
But using such a high-resolution sensor isnt without problems.
It requires more processing power and storage if images are being saved at a higher resolution.
And even with binned images, the image quality benefits are negligible compared to simply using a lower-resolution sensor.
Perhaps more importantly, such a high resolution is unlikely to make an appreciable difference in image quality.
For one, the lenses in smartphones just arent capable of resolving that much detail.
For another, weve consistently seen that image processing is more important than the latest camera hardware these days.
But 200 megapixels sounds better than, say, 50 megapixels.
So 200 megapixels it is.
To be fair, weve known 200 megapixel phones were coming for some time now.
Its likely Motorolas upcoming phone is using the Isocell HP1, a sensorSamsungannouncedlast year.
For most of smartphone history, image quality has had little to do with resolution.
