Samsung and Sony announced a 48-megapixel image sensor for smartphones, details of the devices that would make use of the massive pixel count has been released. Honour has pre-announced its View 20 which uses Sony's IMX586 sensor the same "hole-punch" selfie camera design as Huawei’s upcoming Nova 4, set to be revealed in full next week. The View 20 is the upgraded version of the View 10 which was reasonably impressive after its released earlier this year. Honor is set to provide details on the View 20 on January 22nd, 2019.
Meanwhile, Xiaomi is also set to release a 48-megapixel in coming the months. The company's co-founder and president posted a picture of an unidentified picture to Weibo (below). No other details are available but are set to be released in January.
Samsung and Sony are making similar claims about their sensors: they have sensors and tiny pixels which are physically larger than most competitors. Both companies say each individual pixel can take information from its neighbours to produce the equivalent of a 12-megapixel image. For comparisons, market-leading phones like the Pixel 3 and iPhone Xs have 12-megapixel sensors.
As ever, specs rarely tell the story when it comes to smartphone image quality. Can't wait to see how the claims match up to reality and performance on the market.