Watch out, Samsung: Sony reveals its first 200MP camera phone sensor

There have been rumors for some time that Sony has been developing a 200MP image sensor for camera phones. Well, those rumors have now been proved true. Sony has unveiled its Lytia LYT-901 sensor: a 200MP, 1/1.12-inch chip aimed squarely at Samsung's 200MP ISOCELL HP1, HP2 and HP3 sensors.

Some might say Sony is over four years late to the 200MP party with this sensor. The first 200MP camera phone sensor - the Samsung ISOCELL HP1 - was released back in September 2021.

But the new LYT-901 could well be worth the wait. The sensor's 1/1.12-inch size makes it marginally larger than any of Samsung's 200MP camera phone sensors, and that bodes well for low-light image quality and reduced image noise.

Sony is promising almost 17 stops of dynamic range thanks to its Hybrid Frame-HDR technology that composites frames captured in a short exposure burst. This works in conjunction with Dual Conversion Gain‐HDR - a technology which composites data read at different gain settings into a single frame, enabling high dynamic range up to 4x zoom.

The stacked CMOS design utilizes a Quad-Quad Bayer Coding (QQBC) array, in which 16 (4x4) adjacent pixels are clustered with filters of the same color. During normal shooting, the signals of the 16 clustered pixels are processed as a single pixel unit, allowing the camera to maintain high sensitivity even at night and in dim indoor shooting conditions (and resulting in 12.5MP output images). Alternatively, a portion of the sensor can be used for on-sensor zoom, in which case clustering/pixel binning is no longer used and the sensor defaults to generating images using its individual pixels.

AI is also employed when on-sensor zoom is used. Typically, a pixel-packed sensor like the LYT-901 will struggle to resolve fine detail in anything other than optimal shooting conditions when it can't rely on pixel binning. This is due to the individual pixels being extremely small, not especially light-sensitive, and therefore more susceptible to generating image noise. Consequently, when the LYT-901 has to revert to a per-pixel readout when zooming ('remosaicing', in Sony's terminology), an AI learning-based remosaicing circuit, mounted inside the sensor itself, is said to enable "superior reproduction of details such as fine patterns and letters", along with high-speed processing and up to 30 fps video capture when shooting with up to 4x zoom at 4K resolution.

It's not yet known what might be the first camera phone to incorporate the Lytia LYT-901. However, I'd wager it'd be a flagship device from Oppo, Vivo or Xiaomi, as recent flagship handsets from these manufacturers have all used Sony Lytia sensors.