Robert Triggs / Android Authority
I’ve seen some absolutely phenomenal camera phones cross my desk this year. The extravagant Xiaomi 15 Ultra and more mainstream OnePlus 13, in particular, have upped the ante on the iPhone, Galaxy, and Pixel triopoly, providing avid photographers more choice than ever before.
While some of their best bits will inevitably trickle down to more affordable price points, thereby introducing more consumers to these superb capabilities, there’s also a sense that we might finally be bumping up against the wall of progress.
We can’t fit bigger sensors in our phones without accepting colossal camera bumps or overly-wide fields of view. Likewise, the best zoom cameras are increasingly resorting to clever crops and upscaling, given the lack of space for physically longer focal lengths, even with periscope designs. All hope is not lost, though; there are some important mobile photography innovations on the horizon that you should still keep an eye out for.
Better HDR than mirrorless cameras
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Let’s face it, smartphone sensor sizes will never reach the lofty heights of compact mirrorless or even Micro Four Thirds cameras. 1-inch sensors like the LTY-900 are about as large as is feasible, and even then, it’s arguably a bit too large to achieve an ideal focal length; bigger sensors require more space between them and the lens to avoid ultrawide fields of view. The best camera phones have sat quite comfortably at around 1/1.3-inches for a while now, and could well remain there for the foreseeable future.
Instead, sensors are turning to smarter tricks to capture better light from the same-sized sensors and pixels. Take Sony’s newly announced LYT-818; a 1/1.28-inch sensor sporting brand new Hybrid Frame-HDR (HF-HDR) technology.
HF-HDR builds on the Dual ISO Conversion Gain (DCG) approach for dark shadows by merging short-time exposure frames into the mix, allowing it to capture bright highlights. Sony claims this provides over 100dB or up to 17 stops of dynamic range (the range between the lightest and darkest capture before clipping), resulting in fewer blown-out backgrounds or much better subject detail capture, even when zooming in. Sony’s LYT-828 also debuts proprietary ultra-high conversion gain (UHCG) technology to reduce random noise for improved low-light capture, which will help phones reduce reliance on post-processing.
Sony isn’t the only company investing in improved HDR capabilities and light capture. OmniVision’s new 1-inch OV50X sports lateral overflow integration capacitor (LOFIC) for improved dynamic range in bright light, along with more conventional DCG HDR technology. Apparently, the OV50X “provides close to 110 decibels (dB) single-exposure HDR.” It’s a big sensor, but could make for a real photography and videography powerhouse.
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