Stunning Details with 108 Million Pixels

The ISOCELL HM3 packs in 108 million 0.8um-sized pixels that are optimized to enhance clarity, allowing it to capture images that are highly detailed. For enhanced light sensitivity and color fidelity, each pixel is improved with ISOCELL 2.0 technology, which is a new generation of Samsung’s pixel isolation technology. ISOCELL technology uses a physical barrier between neighboring pixels to reduce color interference and prevent optical loss. With ISOCELL 2.0, Samsung utilized upgraded materials between color filters to increase light sensitivity and improve color fidelity.

The ISOCELL HM3 also features Nonapixel technology, which elevates performance in low-light conditions. In low-light environments, the image sensor combines nine pixels into one, and together, these nine pixels produce a single, big-pixel-like effect, allowing the newly formed pixel to absorb more light and thus produce bright, clear photos with reduced noise. The sensor also includes an improved re-mosaic algorithm that allows it to rearrange its 108 million pixels to best effect in bright settings, ensuring that it delivers optimized image resolution.

Bring Images to Life with Vibrant Colors

A truly capable image sensor must be able to adjust to take high quality photos in a broad range of lighting environments. With Smart-ISO, the ISOCELL HM3 is equipped with two levels of conversion gain for high and low ISO modes, allowing the camera to intelligently select the optimal settings for the lighting condition.

When shooting in well-lit environments, the ISOCELL HM3 takes pictures in low ISO mode in order to express colors more vividly and reduce oversaturation. When taking photos in low-lit environments, however, the sensor switches to high ISO mode to ensure your photos come out bright and clear. What’s more, to further improve nighttime shooting capabilities, the ISOCELL HM3 employs multi-sampling technology, which reads a scene into multiple frames and produces an average read of the frames to reduce noise in your final image. As a result, you get crisp, clear nighttime shots with less grainy-looking noise.

And Smart-ISO Pro takes things a step further by allowing the user to capture outstanding images with a broad dynamic range in mixed light settings as well. In this situation, the image sensor combines readings from both low and high ISO to allow the sensor to produce a single high-quality image with 12-bit color depth. To widen dynamic range even further, the ISOCELL HM3 also includes a Staggered-HDR feature, a fast, power-efficient method of producing high-dynamic range images. Staggered-HDR uses rolling shutters over the same pixel arrays to capture multiple frames at short, middle, and long exposures and then send each row of pixels respectively to the mobile processor. As a result, you get clear, vivid images even in mixed-lighting scenarios, such as sunsets or when shooting indoors against a window.

Capture All Motion Clearly

Few things are more important than autofocus when it comes to capturing scenes that are in motion. Fortunately, the ISOCELL HM3 includes Super PD Plus, which employs micro-lenses that cover the phase detection focusing agents and produce fast, precise autofocus. With optimized curvature on the autofocus micro-lenses, this advanced phase detection autofocus (PDAF) in the ISOCELL HM3 allows users to keep fast-moving subjects in focus, even in dark environments, so that they can capture them in crystal-clear definition.

What’s more, the ISOCELL HM3 doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to capturing high-quality videos, either. Supporting 8K high-resolution video recording, the sensor allows users to capture stunningly detailed videos in crystal-clear clarity. This function allows users to capture slow-motion videos as well, with the sensor capable of taking 4K videos at 120 frames per second and capturing full HD videos at an incredibly slow 240 frames per second.

Let your image sensor elevate your smartphone photography to new heights. By putting the power to capture next-level photos and videos right there in your pocket, the ISOCELL HM3 is raising the bar for smartphone photography.

“While a pixel is just a single dot of color, when in millions, these dots can be transformed into stunning snapshots of life. With more pixels, images are sharper, with fuller details that can maintain their integrity even when enlarged. Samsung has been at the forefront of bringing the most pixels to mobile image sensors as well as various supporting technologies that take sensor performances to the next level,” said Duckhyun Chang, executive vice president of the sensor business at Samsung Electronics. “The ISOCELL HM3 is the culmination of Samsung’s latest sensor technologies that will help deliver premium mobile experiences to today’s smart-device users.”

The 1/1.33” ISOCELL HM3 with 0.8μm-sized pixels is a new addition to Samsung ISOCELL’s 108Mp product line-up.

For faster auto-focus, the HM3 integrates an improved Super PD Plus feature. Super PD Plus adds AF-optimized micro-lenses over the phase detection focusing agents, increasing measurement accuracy of the agents by 50-percent. The enhanced phase detection auto-focusing (PDAF) solution helps to keep moving subjects in sharp focus and delivers optimum results in dark environments.

In mixed light environments, such as at the end of a tunnel, the HM3 adopts Smart ISO Pro, a high-dynamic-range (HDR) imaging technology which uses an intra-scene dual conversion gain (iDCG) solution. Smart ISO Pro simultaneously captures a frame in both high and low ISO, then merges them into a single image in 12-bit color depth and with reduced noise. As Smart ISO Pro does not require multiple exposure shots to create a standard HDR image, it can significantly reduce motion-artifacts. In addition, with a low-noise mode, it improves the light sensitivity by 50-percent to capture brighter and clearer results in low-light environments than its predecessor.

The HM3’s pixel layout is especially arranged in three-by-three single color structures suitable for nine-pixel binning. By merging nine neighboring pixels, the 108Mp HM3 mimics a 12Mp image sensor with large 2.4μm-pixels, heightening light sensitivity when taking photographs in low-light environments. With an improved binning hardware IP, the HM3 supports seamless transitions between 108Mp and 12Mp resolutions.

Designs of the new sensor have also been optimized to reduce energy usage under preview mode by 6.5-percent, offering added power efficiency to the overall mobile device.

Samsung ISOCELL HM3 is currently in mass production.

* Editor’s Note: Actual performance may vary depending on device and user environment.

* Samsung first announced its ISOCELL technology in 2013, which reduces color crosstalk between pixels by placing a physical barrier, allowing small-sized pixels to achieve higher color fidelity. Based on this technology, Samsung introduced the industry’s first 1.0um-pixel image sensor in 2015 and a 0.9-pixel sensor in 2017. Samsung continues to enhance its pixel isolation methods with ISOCELL Plus and the ISOCELL 2.0 technologies.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today introduced a new 16-megapixel (Mp) ISOCELL Slim 3P9 image sensor along with a Plug and Play solution, a pre-optimized turnkey camera module made up of an ISOCELL image sensor and preferred partner components to help expedite time-to-market.

“Samsung’s ISOCELL image sensors take advantage of various technologies to deliver innovative imaging experiences in mobile devices,” said Ben K. Hur, vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics. “The ISOCELL Plug and Play solution will help reduce time-to-market for set makers and offer a quality-assured camera solution to end-users.”

The Samsung ISOCELL Slim 3P9 is a 1.0μm 16Mp image sensor with Tetrapixel* technology that allows bright and vivid pictures in today’s sleekly designed smartphones. With Tetrapixel, a technology that merges four neighboring pixels, the 3P9 can function as a 2.0μm image sensor for front-facing cameras that can take brighter pictures in low-lit environments.

For faster auto-focusing, the 3P9 adopted an advanced phase detection auto-focus (PDAF) with doubled auto-focus agent density than that of conventional PDAF sensors. In addition, the sensor significantly stabilizes pictures and videos taken while in motion with a gyro-synchronizer that syncs frame exposure time from the sensor with movement data from the device’s gyroscope. Once the data is synced, the mobile processor can simply adjust the frames based on movement rather than rigorously analyzing each frame to detect and compensate for angular movement.

For easier camera optimization while accelerating time-to-market, Samsung also offers an ISOCELL Plug and Play solution for the 3P9 in a rear camera module. Optimizing a camera module, made up of parts from different providers, with the mobile processor can be an arduous and lengthy task for smartphone makers. Samsung’s ISOCELL Plug and Play solution simplifies this process by offering a turnkey ISOCELL sensor module tuned for Valued Camera eXperience (VCX)-grade image quality, along with other components, including lenses and actuators from preferred partners.

Since the optimization and reliability tests are done beforehand at the module-level rather than on the sensor alone, manufacturers can simply plug the camera module onto their device, saving up to four months of development time.

The Samsung ISOCELL Slim 3P9 with Plug and Play solution is currently available.

* Technological term of “Tetrapixel” was updated in July 2022