You sometimes here people talk about the iPhone 4S as if it’s a minor upgrade, but even if you’re not wooed by Siri, the camera on the iPhone 4S makes it worth a whole new phone in itself if you have even the most cursory interest in photography. The 8MP back-side illuminated sensor provided by Sony is a marvel — arguably the best camera sensor on a mobile phone outside of the crazy new Nokia PureView 808 — and a serious, serious upgrade over the 5MP OmniVision sensor found in the iPhone 4.
But don’t count OmniVision out for Cupertino’s iPhone 5 business. The Californian digital sensor maker have just announced a crazy 16MP back-side illuminated sensor that could theoretically put the iPhone 4S’s image quality to shame. Even better? Since they are capable of shooting video in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, they’d take perfect images and videos for those rumored new Retina Macs we’ve all been hearing about.
OmniVision’s new 16MP sensors are capable of shooting 4K video, which means a resolution of 4608 x 3456 pixels. If you saw our piece yesterday on what the likely resolutions of the new Retina Macs will be, you’ll see that that comfortably means that a video shot on an iPhone 5 with one of these sensors wouldn’t just run at full resolution on a Retina Mac, it’d have to be downsampled for the screen. Pretty impressive, and definitely the kind of thing Apple would hype the hell of.
Pixels aren’t everything — or even most — of what determines a camera’s quality, of course, but OmniVision has historically done very solid sensors, and seemingly only lost the iPhone 4S contract at the 11th hour to Sony because they couldn’t ramp up production fast enough for an iPhone 4S launch. These new 16MP sensors will go into production towards the end of the year… right in time for the iPhone 5 launch.
Let’s hope OmniVision manages a better roll-out this year. If not, though, hey… there’s always the iPad 4!
Source: PRNewswire
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
9 responses to “OmniVision’s Crazy New 4K Camera Sensor Could Be The Missing Link Between The iPhone 5 And Retina Macs”
Grammar police here! “You sometimes here people” should be “You sometimes hear people”
Very interesting, though. I think a 16mp camera would be fantastic but I really have to question whether or not Apple would even enable the 4k video mode. If they did, they’re going to need more than 16, 32 or even 64 GB to store that kind of video.
It would appear that there is insufficient time to field test such a device before the new iPhone goes into production.
Unless Omnivision already gave Apple a test model to see if they’re interested. Surely Omnivision would love to have Apple’s business once again.
You need a comma before your first ‘but’: “I think a 16mp camera would be fantastic, but I really have to question…”
I do agree a bit with Sean Smith. That kind of file size would tear up the iPhone 64GB storage. A 64GB option would need to be the minimum offer for the iPhone. 128GB would probably disappoint, too. I think people would be scared to use their iPhone camera unless there was a 4K resolution mode that could be toggled. Maybe Apple will ditch the panorama crowd and try to get a 4K resolution crowd. It would look delicious on a Mac, especially a new Mac.
I’m for this sensor; I wish it was a more heavy-hitting rumor, though.
A 16mp camera would definitely make the iPhone a heavy hitting camera phone. Those pictures would look gorgeous. I have to echo the concerns below the 4K video (while as awesome as it sounds) might be too much for the iPhone’s storage capacity. I don’t know if they’ll have enough time to figure out a solution before the iPhone 5 release. Maybe iPad 4 or iPhone 5S/6? – BA
It isn’t the MP that maketh the camera it is the noise in the sensor.
The sensor is so small that noise is always going to be a problem… (it is on DSLRs with bigger sensors) for a phone the iPhone 4s has a great sensor and takes some good pictures but a sensor with more MPs won’t improve them…
4K is for now the realm of Red Camera, Arri Alexa, the new Canon 1Dc and 500c. You need massive storage and as has been mentioned, 4K screens are not yet affordable. However, let’s not forget about OVTI’s 12.7mp camera. This will also be a huge jump up, shoots 24fps video and would be an excellent upgrade/addition to the iPhone 5, the new Mac re-designed line, and the Apple TVs.