Sony Introduces Plane Phase Detection Auto-focus to Smartphones

Everyone who’s in the market for a top notch smartphone always has to consider the shooter that comes attached to it. Most people are after a rear facing camera that gets a great shot, and Sony today announced huge strides in improving camera optics performance for the smartphone market. The Japanese based company announced it’s new Exmor RS IMX230 stacked CMOS imaging sensor – built specifically for smartphone cameras.

Sony’s recent press release gave a little insight into the new image sensors technology. The new sensor will come set for action with a 21-megapixel stills shooter, and will be the first CMOS smartphone image sensor to feature an onboard image plane phase detection AF signal processing function. What does this all mean exactly? Well, Sony’s new smartphone sensor will be able to utilise up to 192 auto-focus points in an image – which should dramatically improve focus on high speed or moving subjects in an image. Improved snap time generally means fantastic image processing, and it’s exciting that high end camera functions are finally trickling down into smartphones. For those who ever shoot scenes with moving objects, such as a sports games for instance, the new Exmor sensor should be right up your alley.

On top of this, the new sensor is also capable of shooting High Dynamic Range still images as well as video. The breakdown is that the lens takes information from two exposure examples and creates a singular image that looks to merge the best of both lighting into one superior coloured image. Video wise, the Exmor RS IMX230 sensor produces 120FPS clips at 720P resolution, 1080P at 60FPS and 4K video at 30FPS. We can expect Sony’s handsets next year starting late April to start shipping with the new sensor.

Thanks to Phandroid for providing us with this information.