Samsung Galaxy S22 reported to feature 200-megapixel Olympus camera
Jul 12, 2021
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Well, it looks like the Samsung + Olympus rumour from back in April might actually turn out to be true. I still think it’s an odd pairing, but GSMArena reports that not only is the Samsung Galaxy S22 is reported to not feature a new version of the 108-megapixel Samsung ISOCELL HM3 sensor, but it’ll have a new 200-megapixel Olympus branded camera module.
The news appears to come from Korean website Pulse News, citing “multiple industry sources”. So, I’d still treat this one as a rumour for now, but it’ll be quite interesting if it does happen. Olympus has never touched smartphones in the past, but perhaps this is one of the new directions the company is taking since its acquisition by JIP.
The pairing of Samsung and Olympus is still odd to me. Partly because Olympus has zero lineage and has shown no interest in the past when it comes to smartphone cameras but also because Samsung’s been doing a pretty good job of things so far all by themselves… Well, mostly. Samsung has traditionally led the way on DxO Mark smartphone scores, although they do seem to be slipping of late, with their current S20 Ultra 5G sitting in 13th place behind Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Apple and Vivo.
Smartphone companies teaming up with camera manufacturers isn’t a new or weird idea. Huawei, for example, teamed up with Leica (who now seem to have gone their own way), VIVO paired themselves with Zeiss and OnePlus has just joined forces with Hasselblad. But Olympus? Maybe teaming up with Olympus isn’t such a strange idea. neither Leica, Zeiss nor Hasselblad really had any interest in smartphones until suddenly, they did.
Perhaps Samsung sees joining forces with Olympus as a way to fight back on those rankings. There is some pretty cool tech in Olympus’ mirrorless cameras that does seem like it would be well suited to smartphones. Things like Live Composite and Live Time long exposures. Maybe some of those features are going to start popping up in Samsung smartphones, too?
Whatever happens, if this ends up being true, I’m very curious to see exactly what they do, especially with the reportedly insane 200-megapixels.
[Pulse News via GSMArena]
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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11 responses to “Samsung Galaxy S22 reported to feature 200-megapixel Olympus camera”
Getting JPEG images which are not wax (ie: mix of too much noise reduction with too much contrast increase) would already be a good start and miles ahead of what *all* smartphone manufacturers do. Lucky them: Olympus JPEG processing is great!
But a 200MP sensor doesn’t bode well… ?
Olivier Gallen I took a look at full size Xiaomi MI 11 ultra photos and they look completely different from usual smartphone photos – much more like a (weak) dslr ?
Olivier Gallen A high end camera phone of that level comes with RAW option.
Adrian: True… but my mother doesn’t shoot raw. And I use my phone differently from my camera, as a quick way to share memories. Good jpeg at 100% would still be a welcome improvement.
Marina: interesting! Thanks ?
Adrian: True… but my mother doesn’t shoot raw. And I use my phone differently from my camera, as a quick way to share memories. Good jpeg at 100% would still be a welcome improvement.
Edit: plus I would want the computational magic into my raws… and only a few high-end smartphone do it well. Olympus also has some knowledge and interested here ?
Marina: interesting! Thanks ?
Sounds like a recipe for big image files and marginal improvements in quality. My 25MP dslr does perfectly fine.
Is your 25MP dslr always with you? I doubt it. And how about a phone? Yeah… Phones will not replace dslrs and dslrs won’t replace phones.
This sounds like the megapixel race of the early 2000’s. I still remember when the point and shoot cameras were racing to get to 2mp then 5mp and so on.
I have a S10+ that I got when it first came out. One of the features really pushed was the camera. On phones not at full size the photos look decent but printed out or at full size they are awful. The image quality on a higher end Sony Mavica camera is a little better (I have tested it).
So maybe they should focus on imporving image quality. The phone itself is great though. Excellent processing power etc. I have had the S series smartphones since the S2. This will be the last Samsung phone I get.
Nice1(t-dax wolf)
Smaller pixels is rarely the answer to better photos… I thought that was general knowledge?
Another cool tool of the trade to use. OK, next.