The iPhone 16 range is tipped to feature a huge upgrade over both the forthcoming iPhone 15 and the ... [+]
Apple’s next-gen iPhone 15 range is almost upon us, but exciting information is already coming in regarding the company’s 2024 iPhone 16 releases.
Following a report by respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, expectations are high for a much-improved camera technology to appear in the iPhone 16. This would give the iPhone 16 / iPhone 16 Pro a considerable lead over this year’s iPhones when it comes to photography.
In a recent tweet promoting a longer blog post, Kuo states:
“Sony’s capacity will remain tight until 2025 as iPhone 16 will adopt more stacked design CIS, which is beneficial for Will Semi to lead the smartphone sector to bottom out and resume growth, and rapidly improve product mix.”
The interesting part here, from the point of view of the camera, is the mention of a “more stacked design CIS”. This is a strong hint that Apple will be switching to a new 2-layer transistor pixel stacked CMOS sensor technology in 2025—the 2-layer stacked CMOS sensor being “more stacked” than current single-layer versions.
The ideal candidate for this upgrade would be Sony’s Exmor T sensor, pioneered in the company’s latest Xperia 1 V flagship.
An upgrade in sensor technology is a tremendously powerful way of boosting camera performance, because significant improvements can be made without having to resort to ever-larger sensors and brighter, more expensive lenses to achieve the same effect.
According to Sony, Exmor T improves on previous stacked CMOS sensors, such as those currently found in the iPhone 14 Pro range, by delivering significantly better dynamic range and low-light performance. Any iPhone switching to a sensor like Exmor T could therefore receive a significant boost in overall camera quality.
Exmor T can be considered more stacked than a standard stacked CMOS design because the array of photodiodes and pixel transistors, that traditionally share a single layer within the stack of components that make up the sensor, have now been stacked one atop the other in two discrete layers.
Sony claims that this new structure roughly doubles the light capacity of the sensor, dramatically improving its ability to capture light and dark tones simultaneously. The extra layer also provides more space for each type of component, allowing for larger pixel transistors to be used, which help substantially reduce the imaging noise which typically impacts the quality of low-light photography. The result, according to Sony, is images that are “closer to the way they are perceived through the human naked eye.”
That said, there are still many other variables at play here. The size of the sensor used will still play a major role in determining overall quality, as will any software-based image processing. Sony’s Xperia 1V, for example, is still bested by larger-sensored rivals such as the Xiaomi 13 Ultra when it comes to low-light performance, so it remains to be seen what Apple can achieve with the technology.
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