About Sony Xperia PRO-I’s 1-inch Image Sensor
Last month Sony introduced Xperia PRO-I with a 1-inch large bottom and is also Sony’s costliest phone. The biggest highlight of the Xperia PRO-I is equipped with a 1-inch image sensor. Other phones on the market with image sensors such as ISOCELL GN2 sensor, the size of only 1/1.12 inches, the area is still a little smaller than the 1-inch image sensor.
Subsequently, some users pointed out that the Xperia PRO-I’s lens can not completely “use” a 1-inch image sensor. So the Sony release of the “1-inch image sensor phone” is a marketing gimmick?
People familiar with photography know that under similar technical conditions, the larger the sensor area, the clearer the picture can be taken. The 1-inch Exmor RS CMOS image sensor may not seem like much in the camera industry, but if placed in the smartphone industry is a pinnacle of existence. And this is also the largest area image sensor used in the cell phone industry. So from the publicity effect alone, the “1.0-type image sensor/1-inch image sensor phone” marketing effect pull full.
But according to common sense, the larger the area of the image sensor, the larger the matching lens needs to be. Cell phones can put down the size of the lens is limited, so it is easy to doubt “with 1-inch CMOS lens can not be stuffed down the phone” such a problem, or that the phone’s lens can not completely “consume” 1-inch CMOS sensor.
In fact, for this problem, Sony is not too “hidden”. In the “Frequently Asked Questions about 1-inch Image Sensors” section of Sony’s official website, Sony gave this description: “The actual area used is about 60% of the total area“. In other words, the “1-inch Image Sensor” can only use 60% of it, which is dissatisfaction.
What are the specific optimizations for this image sensor of Xperia PRO-I?
1-inch Sony image sensor based on Blackcard was developed on the image sensor of a digital camera RX100VII (total pixels 21 million), to achieve a 2.4μm pixel pitch of the high-definition shooting/read speed and better balance. After optimization, the effective pixel of this image sensor is about 12 million, the pixel pitch is 2.4μm, and the actual use area is about 60% of the total area.
Sony mentioned in “Frequently Asked Questions” section on Sony China official website.
For example, like a business selling CPUs, the CPU is designed to be 10 cores, but 4 cores are bad (or blocked), the actual maximum available is 6 cores. If you advertise a 6-core CPU, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you sell by 10-core CPU, that is a marketing gimmick. And this Sony is also the case, although said to be a 1-inch sensor, but the actual available 60%. If you only look at the 1-inch Image Sensor, you think it was a revolutionary improvement in the cell phone industry. But the actual available 60%, the revolutionary upgrade becomes a small upgrade.
