Samsung’s new ISOCELL HP2 smartphone sensor is the company’s third 200-megapixel sensor, promising better pixel technology and the capacity to capture outstanding mobile photographs. The 200MP ISOCELL HP2 image sensor from Samsung for flagship smartphones has 0.6 m pixels on a 1/1.3″ surface. It also has 50MP and 12.5MP pixel-binned low-light modes, 8K30 video with less crop in the 50MP mode, HDR shooting, and improved low-light AF.
Samsung points out that maintaining the same sensor size has the benefit of maintaining the smartphone’s camera bump. That makes sense because upgrading to a 1″ sensor would necessitate purchasing a bigger lens. As a result, Samsung would have to either provide more room in the phone body for the camera module or allow it to protrude further out and grow the camera bump.

The HP2 also incorporates Samsung’s unique Dual Vertical Transfer Gate (D-VTG) technology, which eliminates the washed out effect of images produced in low-light conditions.

“In a photodiode within each pixel, a voltage transfer gate is placed on the bottom to transport electrons from the pixels to the logic layer. With high precision, D-VTG adds a second transfer gate in the pixel, boosting the pixel’s full-well capacity by more than 33%,” Samsung claims. “With more electrons stored and efficient signal transfers, this method can reduce overexposure and enhance color reproduction, especially in bright light conditions.”

The HP2 also includes a revolutionary Super QPD autofocusing mechanism, which lets it focus using all 200 million pixels. They are clustered by four neighboring pixels so that it can distinguish both horizontal and vertical pattern changes to provide faster and more accurate autofocusing, which Samsung claims is powerful enough to allow rapid and precise focusing even in low-light conditions.

Finally, in its 50-megapixel format, the HP2 provides a novel HDR mode that applies two independent conversion values to the analog signal received at the pixel level. The sensor also employs Smart-ISO Pro, a Samsung HDR solution that combines several ISO readout levels from a single exposure, allowing the camera to capture 12.5MP photos and 4K at 60fps video in HDR.