Mobile photography is crazy good these days years… and it’s about to get even better! Honor might be the next company to adopt a 1-inch sensor for a possible upcoming flagship, most likely the Honor Magic 8 Pro.True, while Honor is not as popular in the West as Apple and Samsung are, the company’s move towards a 1-inch camera sensor is important in my opinion. Apple and Samsung – although producing really fine flagships with respectable photography capabilities – might one day soon find themselves to be the last companies not using large sensors in their phones’ camera setups.
Of course, this could be just my Monday optimism speaking here, but I think that the more companies adopt the 1-inch sensor standard, the higher the chances are for Apple and Samsung to do the same.
Heck, Xiaomi could introduce a Micro Four Thirds sensor (two times larger than the already large 1-inch sensor), as we’ve recently seen at MWC.
The rumors about Honor and the 1-inch sensor go even further: a notable Weibo tipster by the nickname of Smart Pikachu (this alias always gets me blowing air out of my nose) recently hinted that Honor will “self-develop” the sensor.
It’s not clear if that means building a 1-inch imaging sensor from scratch, or just adapting an existing 1-inch sensor and tweaking it heavily.
As you’ve probably heard, a 1-inch sensor is a game-changer for mobile photography because it allows for significantly improved light intake, resulting in better low-light performance and dynamic range. Larger sensors capture more detail with less noise, making nighttime and indoor shots much clearer and more refined.
Additionally, with a shallower depth of field compared to smaller sensors, phones with a 1-inch sensor can produce a more natural-looking background blur (you can call that “bokeh”, if you want to sound fancy), enhancing portrait shots. This makes images look more like those taken with professional cameras.
If Honor combines a 1-inch sensor with variable aperture for its lens, it could mean that users would have the ability to shoot in a variety of conditions with much greater precision. Unlike fixed apertures, which struggle to balance exposure in different lighting conditions, a variable aperture can adjust to optimize image quality.
Let’s hope the rumors are true!
