Samsung Details the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 200MP Camera Sensor

Numerous leaks have pointed to a major camera upgrade for Samsung’s upcoming flagship smartphone, and although the Galaxy S23 Ultra won’t be revealed for a few more weeks, we know everything about its new primary camera sensor. Samsung has taken the wraps off its new ISOCELL HP2, which has a whopping 200 megapixels of resolution.

Samsung’s new sensor is a 1/1.3-inch format, the same size as the 108MP sensor it has used in its Ultra-branded phones for the last several years. The pixels are 0.6μm in size, which is actually slightly smaller than the 0.7μm pixels in the 108MP sensor. Larger pixels can collect more light, but it seems Samsung felt the jump to 200MP was worth a small tradeoff here.

While the sensor has 200 million pixels, you probably won’t be shooting at full resolution very often. The ISOCELL HP2 is built for Samsung’s “tetra pixel” binning technology. Binning is common in high-resolution smartphone cameras. It takes groups of pixels and merges them together to simulate larger, more sensitive pixels. In the case of the HP2, it can operate in 50MP mode by linking four adjacent pixels (effectively 1.2μm) or 12.5MP mode with 16 binned pixels (2.4μm). The sensor is also tuned for 8K video, which is about 33MP resolution. When shooting in 8K, the ISOCELL HP2 operates in 50MP mode “to minimize cropping and capture more of the scene.”

The ISOCELL HP2 will be the primary camera sensor in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, seen here in a leaked render. (Credit: Onleaks/SmartPrix)

Samsung also has some new technologies to boost color reproduction. The Dual Vertical Transfer Gate (D-VTG) adds a second voltage transfer gate to each pixel. This electronic component is responsible for transporting electrons from the pixels to the logic layer. Adding a second gate increases the pixel’s “full-well capacity” by a third. That means you’re less likely to get washed-out images in brightly lit settings. In the same vein, Samsung has enhanced HDR performance with a feature called Dual Slope Gain (DSG). For the first time, this will work in 50MP mode, applying two separate conversion values to the analog signal at the pixel level. That means better detail in varying light across the frame.

Samsung says the ISOCELL HP2 has entered mass production, which makes sense. The Galaxy S23 family will be announced on Feb 1, and the devices should go on sale in the following weeks. We expect this sensor will only be found in the high-end S23 Ultra. The base model and S23+ will have a different, lower-resolution primary camera.

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