A 'world-first' astrophotography timelapse mode is coming to budget phones soon

realme held a camera innovation event on YouTube today, and the realme 8 series wasn’t announced at this event. Instead, the company confirmed that the realme 8 Pro will offer a 108MP main camera.

The company revealed that the realme 8 Pro will pack a Samsung Isocell HM2 108MP sensor, featuring nona-binning (nine-in-one pixel binning). This sensor has a 1/1.52-inch size and features 0.7 micron pixels, with nona-binning resulting in photos comparable to images taken with a 12MP 2.1 micron camera. realme also gave us a few quick peeks at the Pro model during the event. Check out the screenshot below and a clearer image above.

realme also revealed several camera upgrades coming to the series, such as tilt-shift video recording, a second-generation starry mode and starry timelapse video. The latter is what piques our interest though, as the OEM is claiming that this is a world first for a smartphone.

The 30fps starry timelapse mode requires 15 16-second exposures to generate one frame of timelapse video. realme says you’ll need to keep shooting for eight minutes if you want a one second video, so be prepared to shoot for much longer if you want a timelapse lasting for a few seconds. Check out samples of the mode below.

There’s no word on when the realme 8 series will actually be launching, but it’s clear 108MP cameras are set to be a theme in the mid-range space. Aside from the realme 8 Pro, Redmi has also confirmed that it will be offering a Redmi Note 10 series phone with a 108MP sensor.

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