Better photos AND a smaller camera bump? This new tech could forever change phone cameras

Today’s smartphone cameras have seen major strides in the last decade. We’ve seen ever larger sensor sizes, tons of megapixels, and solutions like LOFIC for much better dynamic range. However, new research could result in a massive leap forward.

Researchers at Japan’s Nagoya University have developed gallium-doped zinc oxide nanosheets (h/t: Digital Trends) which could enable smaller yet higher quality smartphone camera sensors. These sheets can be stacked to effectively create a more advanced color filter, with each layer detecting a different color. This would allow a single pixel under these sheets to detect red, green, or blue colors.

All smartphone camera sensors use Bayer filters to help capture color, which are placed atop the sensor. These filters contain a pattern of red, green, and blue squares to capture red, green, and blue color information. Conventional camera sensors (e.g., 12MP) use one pixel to capture one type of color via the Bayer filter, but rely on adjacent pixels to detect other colors. However, this new technology sees one pixel used to capture red, green, and blue.

So what does that mean for smartphone cameras?

Well, this could enable smaller camera sensors by ditching Bayer filters. That’s not a small benefit by any means, as reductions in internal space can be used for upgrades like bigger batteries, more advanced stabilization, larger image sensors, and more.

This also has major implications for image quality. This technology apparently offers a sensitivity of 800 amperes per watt versus a conventional camera’s 10 amperes per watt. Furthermore, cameras with this tech can apparently deliver color images with half the “error” of conventional camera sensors. That’s presumably because each pixel can capture any color.

Does this mean you should expect much better main camera shots? Well, it’s unclear whether this technology can scale up to support large smartphone sensors like 200MP shooters and one-inch cameras. If not, it’s possible that a much larger conventional camera sensor, complete with modern technologies like LOFIC and multi-frame processing, might still capture better shots. These larger sensors would also deliver superior depth-of-field effects. But this would still be a boon for selfie cameras, ultrawide cameras, and other situations where smaller sensors are used.