Nokia stunned people back in 2012 with a 41-megapixel camera in the 808 PureView, and since then, the battle for high-megapixel cameras in Android smartphones has been on.
Now, phones equipped with 48 and 64-megapixel cameras are also becoming common, as Xiaomi and Realme have introduced phones with 64-megapixel cameras, while phones with 48-megapixel cameras have been introduced by many companies so far this year.
But can you tell the difference between a 48-megapixel and a 64-megapixel camera? Or which of them is better, can explain the difference?
Do more megapixels mean better photography?
Do you think more megapixels mean better photos? But this is not true.
Of course, a 48 or 64-megapixel camera is a nice improvement, but it’s not about image quality, a megapixel camera, or a measure of photo quality, in fact, even a 2,000-megapixel camera can take crappy pictures.
In fact, more megapixels means that the camera sensor can collect more details of the scene, but it does not guarantee the best quality.
The presence of more pixels in the camera sensor means that the pixels in the scene will be smaller, but the size of the smartphone body and the camera sensor inside can affect the image quality.
Rob Leighton, who teaches mobile journalism and smartphone photography at Bond University in Australia, explains that ‘when it comes to smartphone megapixel numbers and image quality, quality matters more than quantity, an old marketing technique. It has become a reality that the more megapixels a smartphone camera has the better image quality. But this is not always true and several factors have to be taken into account, such as sensor size, image processing with machine learning and neural networks, etc.
“These elements are more important in today’s era, with larger sensors providing better quality images than sensors with more megapixels that don’t absorb as much light,” he said.
In simple terms, the quality of an image is determined by how much light its sensor is able to absorb.
Larger sensors also have larger pixels and are capable of absorbing light, resulting in better image results.
This is why the quality of 12-megapixel cameras on Google, Samsung, or Apple phones is often much better than that of higher-megapixel camera phones.
