Samsung announced on several sites they were working on a 12MP camera phone for the future, but it’s Sony that has beat them to the punch and actually announced the world’s first 12 MP CMOS image sensor for handsets, and the technology should be in phones as soon as March 2009, according to Sony.
The Asian half of the Sony Ericsson partnership has just gone official with unveiling the IMX060PQ, a 1/2.5 CMOS image sensor from the Exmor series that, apparently, has the industry’s highest Megapixel count: 12.25 MP, which rivals and beats some dedicated digital cameras.
The new 12.25 MP sensor is equipped with autofocus and various other photo enhancement features. Its price is said to be around 2,500 Japanese yen ($26 USD wholesale), so the phones to include it should not be more expensive than the 8 Megapixel ones that are already on the market (such as the Sony Ericsson C905, Samsung Innov8 or LG Renoir). I’m sure there will be an early “premium” involved with the price tags, as with any fancy new technology, but that should settle down quickly enough.
Needless to say, the handsets that will include Sony’s IMX060PQ will be made by Sony Ericsson first, so I guess we should expect some really amazing 12MP Cyber-shot phones to come in 2009 (rumors are they’re already working on a 12MP phone code-named the Kotaku).
We can’t wait. It will be a good thing when phones can take pics just as clear as a digital camera, without the trade-offs associated with that sort of thing right now.
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