Have you ever invested in a handset promising you a camera with an insane number of megapixels, only for it to deliver pretty shoddy photos? Cameras on phones, touted as a major selling point, are rarely an acceptable replacement for your digital camera and turn out to be a let down more often than not.
Well, as Bob Dylan would croon, the times they are a-changin’ – having rammed increasingly large numbers of megapixels down our throats for the past few years, manufacturers could now be turning their attention to the camera’s image sensor. The size and light-absorbing capabilities of the sensor make a real difference to picture quality.
A Californian company, InVisage Technologies, has developed a new kind of image sensor that uses quantum dots instead of the traditional silicon. Quantum dots are semi-conductor particles and are around 40% better at absorbing light than silicon. And, well, let’s face it – they sound much cooler.
If the quantum dot based sensors can be integrated into mobile phone cameras, it should mean sharper, better quality images – more akin to a DSLR shot than a dodgy pixellated mess. InVisage has promised to keep costs in line with current silicon sensors and reckons we could see the new sensors in mobile phones as early as next summer. You could be ditching the digital camera next year after all.
[Source: Wired. Image credit: OnlyGizmos]
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