Just when you thought the megapixel race was over, an arms dealer comes up with a bigger and better bombshell. The ZTE Axon 30 Pro will boast a 200 megapixel image sensor – the most pixels ever seen on a smartphone or consumer camera.
That means the ZTE Axon 30 Pro will boast around double the resolution of the Fujifilm GFX 100S and quadruple that of the Sony A1. Which, is you're measuring pixel count alone, would make it the best camera phone out there.
The pixel-pushing power will be made possible by a number of factors – not least the image sensor itself, of course, but it's also down to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 flagship chipset (revealed in December) along with a new Spectra 580 ISP processor,
These holy trinity conspires to create "extreme performance", according to ZTE president Ni Fei. This includes low light shooting in conditions as dim as 0.1 lumens, 4K HDR video, 10-bit imaging, and a claimed 2.7 billion pixels per second speed for both stills and movies.
"If Snapdragon 888 is one of the most powerful flagship chips on the planet, then its computing image performance is very likely the strongest on the surface, there is no one!" the executive posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo (spotted by our colleagues at TechRadar).
"The brand new Spectra 580 ISP (computational vision image signal processor) has the following extreme performance:
1. A single image sensor with a maximum of 200 million pixels!
2. Take pictures or videos at a speed of 2.7 billion pixels per second!
3. Support for taking pictures in extreme low light environments as low as 0.1 lumens!
4. Support 4K HDR video capture for HDR calculation for the first time!
5. Full link 10bit image capability!"
As we've seen with 108MP phones like the new Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, these ridiculous-resolution images still aren't quite on par with those taken on larger sensors in traditional cameras.
Still, with 200MP in your pocket, would you really need to bring your 'proper camera' with you any more? We don't know when the ZTE Axon 30 Pro will be released, but we're intrigued to try out these masses of megapixels when it does!
Read more:
Fujifilm GFX 100S vs GFX 100
Sony A1 vs Canon EOS R5
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review
