14 DAY TRIAL // Apple's camera sensor supplier, OmniVision Technologies, has just gone on record to announce a new 8-megapixel sensor that is 20 percent slimmer than all competing modules in the market at the moment. Apple is widely believed to employ an 8 megapixel image sensor for the iPhone 5.
OmniVision has been supplying Apple with imaging sensors for a while now, and it doesn’t seem the partnership is coming to an end any time soon.
In fact, OmniVision is widely rumored to be one of two suppliers for an 8-megapixel camera sensor that Apple wishes to equip the iPhone 5 with.
OmniVision’s Per Rosdahl (senior product manager), said today, “With our new OmniBSI-2 architecture, we have further miniaturized our pixels while delivering a 20 percent improvement in peak quantum efficiency in all color channels, a 35 percent improvement in low-light sensitivity and a 45 percent increase in full-well capacity in an extremely compact and power efficient package.”
“This 1.1-micron OmniBSI-2 pixel enables the next generation of miniaturization in mobile cameras, and is key to the high-resolution smartphone camera roadmap,” added Rosdahl.
And while the iPhone 5 will most likely employ a higher-resolution camera than the current 5-megapixel sensor found int he iPhone 4, “sampling [of the new 8MP OV8850] will begin in August, with mass production expected in the first calendar quarter of 2012,” OmniVision said.
This either means that Apple will tap someone else to get an 8-megapixel camera inside the iPhone 5, or that the iPhone 5 ship with a lower-res camera.
Delaying the phone to 2012 because of this drawback is not an option for the Cupertino technology mammoth, and certainly not one that cannot be overcome by Sony, whose services are also said to be sought by Apple.