While Sony's smartphone division isn't doing so hot on the sales front, Japanese company is continuing to innovate behind the scenes. Today, Sony they've developed the industry's first 3-Layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM for smartphones, which is capable of capturing images of faster moving object as well as shooting 1080p video at up to 1000 frames per second.
Currently, the best specs for slow motion video available on smartphones is 720p at 240fps, which you'll find on the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S7. Sony has more than quadrupled those figures — shooting at 1080p no less — which is quite frankly amazing.
Check out this sample footage of what this new sensor is capable of:
While the video capabilities are amazing, the new tech will also vastly improve the ability to shoot fast-moving objects with your smartphone while minimizing focal plane distortion. From the blog post:
With the stacked high-speed, low power consumption, high-capacity DRAM, the new sensor can read one still image of 19.3 million pixels in only 1/120 second (approximately 4x faster than conventional products), reducing the time lapse for reading each pixel line. This technology minimizes the focal plane distortion in still images that tends to occur when shooting fast-moving subjects on smartphones, which lack a mechanical shutter for controlling exposure time.
While Sony didn't offer any timelines or info as to when we'll see this new sensor implemented in a new phone, you can read the full nitty-gritty details behind the tech here and then start dreaming about the super cool footage you'll be able to record when this, eventually, comes to future smartphones.
