Sony Xperia Z1's sensor size beats pack but not leaders

The Sony Xperia Z1, previously known as the Honami, is reported to have a 1/2.3" sensor with a total of 20MP.

It seems it will have larger pixels than the current crop of 13MP Androids but if it is serious about being a better cameraphone those are not its competitors.  By my calculation (using the formulae from my earlier post on sensor sizes) the Xperia Z1 will have pixels that are 65 millionths of an inch high and wide.  That means  it will have way smaller pixels than any of:

• Nokia N8 [109]
• HTC One [108]
• Nokia Pureview 808 [93]
• Nokia Lumia 920/928/925 [77]
• Nokia Lumia 1020 [75]
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom [75]. 

The figures in square brackets are my calculation of the width and heights of those phone's sensor pixels in millionths of an inch based on figures for sensor sizes and pixel dimensions from GSMArena and some other odd sources around the web where GSMArena does not have sensor sizes.

Sensor size and pixel size is not everything in any camera, let alone a cameraphone.  Nor is megapixels.  Apple's iPhone, which has consistently trailed the pack in megapixel count and has had the standard sized sensor of the time, has always consistently been ranked as a top, if not the top, performer for image quality.  That is a tribute to Apple's system and software design.

So, the fact that Sony's new camera flagship may not have the numbers to suggest a great cameraphone does not mean it will not be a great cameraphone.  However, years ago, Sony Ericsson was first to market with a 12MP cameraphone, the Idou/Satio.  The Satio was physically a gorgeous phone. The slide to open lens protector looked and felt the business. 

The photos did not live up to the promise and I sold mine on within two weeks of purchase.  By contrast, my Nokia N8, now well into its third year of use, keeps producing good photos (and keeps playing music from a 1TB portable hard drive in my car).

I hope the Z1 will be the cameraphone that we have hoped for from Sony for years but I am not optimistic.

Sony DSC-QX10 and DSC-QX100 remind of the innovative Sony of old

I remember during the 70s and 80s Sony seemed to the company that always had the most interesting new gadgets. 

The Walkman in all of its iterations was the flagship especially the version that was barely bigger than a cassette.  The trouble with that product was that it easily got bent during use with the result that all of your music was susceptible to audible wow. 

My cousin had a credit card sized FM radio which was astoundingly portable.  The trouble with that product was that the battery life was never any good and it seemed you had to hold rock still to get a signal lock, which defeated the purpose of the portability.

Maybe the weirdest was a player for LP records that was not a turntable.  Instead the records were placed in a vertical slot that rotated the records.  I never used one of those so I do not know if it was any good.  I assume not since there were only a few about and this was well before turntables were superseded by CD players. 

Those products really established for me the image of Sony as a cutting edge adventurous manufacturer willing to use its technological might to get novel ideas into the market.  I guess Apple must have learnt from Sony's mistakes that it is not just about getting novel ideas into the market, they also have to work.  Apple, in fact, does not tend to do anything really new, it just puts existing ideas together better than anyone else.

The just leaked Sony DSC-QX10 and DSC-QX100 "lenses" remind me of that old Sony.  They are really innovative and like nothing else on the market.  It seems like a good solution to the cameraphone issue.  You want a good camera and a good phone with you but you do not want to carry two full devices that have a lot of duplicated parts.

I am looking forward to seeing whether Sony has come up with really good products or whether there will be some flaw that means they will just be a quirky side note to gadget history.

Cameraphones, sensor resolution and pixel size - N8 remains king

As I recall it, in April 2010 the Nokia N8 was the first cameraphone where sensor size was made a major selling point.  The number of megapixels, 12MP, was a selling point too, but Nokia was not the first to make a 12MP cameraphone, that title went to the Sony Ericsson Satio.  The Nokia N8 has a sensor which is 1/1.83 inches on the diagonal.  That placed it squarely in competition with typical compact point and shoot cameras which even now typically have sensors of between about 1.7 and 1/2.3 inches.  The N8 could not have as good lenses as a dedicated camera and did not have image stabilisation but given decent lighting and a steady hand, it was and is capable of taking an excellent high resolution photograph.  It was at the time of release widely regarded as the king of cameraphones (but was always criticised as a smartphone).

Now, in August 2013, more than three years later, a lot seems to have changed in the cameraphone market. 

First, Nokia has released five Pureview branded cameraphones in succession that it has marketed as the best cameraphone.  In order of release (noting sensor size) they are the Symbian driven 808 (1/1.2 inch) and the four Lumia Windows Phones, 920, 928, 925 (all 1/3 inch) and 1020 (1/1.5 inch).  The first and last of these have what we might call "Phase 1" Pureview technology, being an advanced pixel binning algorithm.  The Windows Phones have what we might call "Phase 2" Pureview technology, being optical image stabilisation.  The middle three phones have been reported as having the same Sony manufactured sensor as is found on most Android flagships, see below.  On the face of it, the N8 has been deposed by its own kingmaker.

Secondly, Samsung has continued the development of its optical zoom equipped line of cameraphones.  This line seems to have started in September 2009 (i.e. predating the N8) with the W880, which was a featurephone (i.e. the operating system did not permit installation of new software except perhaps via a Java engine) had a 12MP sensor and 3 times optical zoom.  (We should not forget that Altek made a cameraphone with a similar design ethos called the Leo which looked fabulous on paper. In September 2010 it had a 14MP sensor, 3 times optical zoom and Android 2.1. It was derided in every review I read but it certainly looked the part.) What appears to be the latest iteration is the Galaxy S4 Zoom, with a 16MP sensor, 10 times optical zoom and full smartphone functionality via Android.  The sensor is 1/2.33 inch.

Thirdly, the Android flagship standard camera unit is now a 13MP sensor, which some suggest is made for all manufacturers by Sony.  Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, Acer Padphone Infinity, Lenovo K900, LG G2 and Huawei Ascend P2 all have a 13MP sensor, which some report as 1/3 inches in size.  Note that although it is reported as being the same sensor it has been suggested that the 920/925/928 sensor is actually 10% bigger although I do not see how that could be so.

Finally, perhaps the joker in the megapixel pack is the HTC One and its ultrapixel technology.  The HTC One, according to gsmarena.com, has a 4MP sensor that is 1/3 inch.  The logic for this development is twofold.  First, cameraphones are more likely to be used where you do not have your dedicated camera, such as at the office during work hours, at home after hours, out at a bar after hours and so on, all typically low light environments, where bigger pixels are an advantage because each pixel can capture more light with less noise.  Secondly, photos taken on a cameraphone are more likely to be shared via social media and messaging, so high resolution is less important.  HTC, on the face of it, has taken an extreme novel position with a view to delivering a better photograph for the purposes of the user. 

So, getting back to the N8, given all the foregoing developments, is there any argument for it still being king?  I say, yes.  Here is the argument.

The Nokia N8 was never going to beat cameras with better lenses or with optical image stabilisation in scenarios where a better lens and stabilisation is required.  Its sensor only gave it an advantage where its lens could do as good a job as any camera (i.e. subject not too near and not too far), where there was decent light (i.e. basically outdoors with reasonable sun) and held steady (preferably sitting on a table).  Given all of those conditions being matched (and let me be quite clear, those are not weird or exceptional conditions, they are the conditions in which I shoot most of the time) the Nokia N8 is still the king.  The reason is simple.  The Nokia N8 still has the best pixel number to pixel size mix.  To understand why I say that, we need to look at the exact calcuations.

		A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J
Phone	MP	pixel area sq inches	Sensor size	diagonal inches	sensor w pixels	sensor h pixels	diagonal pixels	sensor w inches	sensor h inches	pixel width inches	pixel height inches
N8	12	1.194E-08	1/1.83	0.5464481	4000	3000	5,000	0.44	0.33	0.000109	0.000109
HTC One	4	1.165E-08	1/3	0.3333333	2688	1520	3,088	0.29	0.16	0.000108	0.000108
808	38	8.684E-09	1/1.2	0.8333333	7152	5368	8,942	0.67	0.50	0.000093	0.000093
920/928/925	8.7	6.675E-09	1/3	0.3333333	3264	2448	4,080	0.27	0.20	0.000082	0.000082
1020	38	5.558E-09	1/1.5	0.6666667	7152	5368	8,942	0.53	0.40	0.000075	0.000075
GS4 zoom	16	5.552E-09	1/2.33	0.4291845	4608	3456	5,760	0.34	0.26	0.000075	0.000075

 

What those calculations show is that the Nokia N8 still has the biggest pixels of any cameraphone.  Interestingly, the HTC One, which supposedly has large pixels as its big technological trump card, actually has smaller pixels than the Nokia N8.  My calculations make some assumptions that may be unsafe.  They assume that the proportions of the sensor (i.e. ratio of width to height) match the stated pixel width and height.  I have interpolated the pixel size by calculating height and width in terms of inches (columns G and H) proportional to the stated pixel dimensions from gsmarena.com.

 

So, each pixel in the N8 should, in theory, be receiving the most light of any cameraphone.  The newer phones have back side illumination (BSI) which is said to counteract that.  I wonder whether BSI can double the amount of light because the pixels on the N8 are double the size of those on the 1020.  So, on a reasonably well lit day, if you take the virtually identically composed photo with the N8 and the 1020, what will be the difference.  The N8 will get more light per pixel, that is, it will be a less noisy photo.  It will be a 12MP photo that you can print at a decent size, maybe A4, maybe more.  The 1020 will have more detail in the 34MP photo because it has more pixels but the odds are that it will have more noise too.  The 5MP photo shot on the 1020 at the same time will use pixel binning to reduce the noise but you will lose some resolution too and query whether you can print it at the same size.

 

This may not be a strong argument for the continuing reign of the N8 but it raises some interesting questions such as, why has no one made a cameraphone with bigger pixels than the N8 since?  Clearly bigger sensors are possible so why not use these bigger sensors to give bigger pixels.  It seems that since the N8 we have to have all (41MP but tiny pixels) or nothing (4MP and big but still not as big) pixels.

 

I would love to back up my theories with some shoot outs but I only have a Nokia N8 so I have no idea how well any of the others perform.  Hopefully someone else will take up the challenge and do a proper comparison between the N8 and the newer cameraphones.