Samsung announces 108MP Bright HMX camera sensor in partnership with Xiaomi

Xiaomi recently revealed that an upcoming Redmi smartphone will feature the 64MP Samsung ISOCELL GW1 sensor. The Chinese smartphone teased another upcoming Mi series device with a 108MP sensor with a crazy resolution of 12,032 x 9,024 pixels. Today Samsung has announced the same sensor. Meet the 108MP Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX– which is the first image sensor to go beyond 100MP.

Xiaomi and Samsung in a partnership are developing the Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX.  They worked closely together from the early conceptual stage all the way to the production of the sensor. Mass production for the Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX begins later this month.

The sensor has a large 1/1.33” that allows it to take in more light. Usually, mobile sensors with high MP come with some form of pixel binning technology. This sensor is no different and takes the help of Samsung’s Tetracell technology. It merges four pixels into one resulting in a brighter 27MP image.

The sensor also comes with Smart ISO, a mechanism that can select the level of amplifier gains according to the lightning for optimal light-to-electric signal conversion. In plain, it switches to low ISO in bright environments for pixel saturation and high ISO in darker scenes to help reduce noise. Bright HMX comes with support for video recording up to 6K (6016 x 3384) at 30fps without losses in field-of-view.

Neither Samsung nor Xiaomi has revealed the name of the first smartphone that will sport this sensor. Xiaomi did reveal it will be a Mi device, which is why it is rumored that the upcoming Xiaomi Mi Mix 4 might be the first device with the sensor. Competitors like Realme and Vivo better have something up on their sleeve to match it. In fact, Realme managed to show off a prototype 64MP device a day after Xiaomi’s announcement. Also, all Realme devices will now sport a quad-camera setup.

Via