Taking photos in a low-light environment using your mobile phone tends to result in an image that looks grainy due to increased noise. Samsung tried to fix that with its ISOCELL technology introduced in 2013. Today, the company has unveiled its new ISOCELL Plus technology designed to further enhance your phone camera's low-light performance and color fidelity.
ISOCELL Plus builds upon the first version of Samsung's ISOCELL technology, which helps to produce high-quality images by forming a physical barrier in the form of metal grids between pixels. The goal of the barrier is to prevent color transmitted on one pixel from creating an unwanted effect in another and allow each pixel to capture more light than the typical image sensor model. However, the use of metal grids can cause an inadvertent optical loss once an incoming light is reflected or absorbed.
The newer technology is the product of collaboration between Samsung and Fujifilm, which created a new material meant to replace the metal grids to reduce optical loss and avoid light reflection. Samsung claims the new iteration of ISOCELL Plus boosts light sensitivity by up to 15 percent and increase the color fidelity.
Samsung says the technology is capable of equipping image sensors with 0.8-micrometer and smaller-sized pixels, which makes ISOCELL Plus an ideal solution for building 20-megapixel plus cameras. The technology will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai this week.
The South Korean tech giant did not say how it will bake the new technology into future smartphones. However, it's no secret that Samsung incorporates ISOCELL-type image sensors into its mobile device offerings such as the Galaxy Note8. The Galaxy S9 range also boasts an advanced camera with its super slow-mo and low light photography features.
