Given that Samsung has already achieved a dominant position in the DRAM and NAND flash memory market, the company now wants to dominate the image sensor market as well. It was recently reported that Samsung is going to increase the production capacity of its image sensors as it wants to dethrone Sony as the global leader in the image sensor market.
Samsung today announced the launch of a new image sensor which it says is going to save valuable development time for smartphone makers. The company's new 16-megapixel ISOCELL Slim 3P9 sensor offers a “Plug & Play” solution which Samsung says can save up to four months of development time for manufacturers. This gives smartphone manufacturers an incentive to opt for Samsung's sensors and thus aids the company in achieving its aim of dominating the image sensor market.
New sensor is readily available for smartphone manufacturers
Samsung's new 16-megapixel ISOCELL Slim 3P9 image sensor with Plug and Play solution is a pre-optimized turnkey camera module that will expedite time-to-market for clients. It's a 1.0μm with Tetracell technology which will enable sleekly designed smartphones to take bright and vivid pictures.
Tetracell technology merges four neighboring pixels thus enabling the module to effectively function as a 2.0μm image sensor for front-facing cameras that can take brighter pictures in dark environments.
The sensor has an advanced phase detection auto-focus with doubled auto-focus agent density for faster auto-focusing. It also has a gyro-synchronizer which stabilizes images and video by syncing the frame exposure time from the sensor with movement data from the device's gyroscope.
To reduce development time for manufacturers, Samsung offers them an ISOCELL Plug and Play solution for the sensor in a rear camera module along with other components such as actuators and lenses from preferred partners. It does all of the optimization and reliability tests at the module-level so that manufacturers can simply plug the camera into their devices and be ready to ship.
Smartphone manufacturers can source the new camera sensor from Samsung right away.
